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Book._ _ 

Gofyright N°__ 

COFmiGHT DEPOSIT. 
























The Youth of 
America 


By 

DANIEL L. MARSH 



i ’ * > 


THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 


NEW YORK 


CINCINNATI 





Copyright, 1923, by 
DANIEL L. MARSH 


< 




Printed in the United States America 


JUN 3C 1323 

©C1A705092 



DEDICATED 

TO MARY, MARJORIE, MADELEINE, HARRIET, 

MY GIRLS, 

WITH A FATHER’S LASTING LOVE AND HIGHEST HOPES 









CONTENTS 

i 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Youth and the Family. 7 

II. Youth and Education. 30 

III. Youth and Physical Efficiency. 58 

IV. Youth and Employment. 90 

V. Youth and Citizenship. 120 

VI. Youth and Religion. 158 


V 




















CHAPTER I 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 

Here is an ever-recurring drama of life constrain¬ 
ing the youth of America: 

It is springtime. The air is soft and sweet. Under 
a rosebush lies a little girl, fast asleep in the lawn’s lap 
of tangled shine and shade diamonded with dew. The 
bursting rosebuds are symbolical of the little bundle of 
unfolding girlhood, upon whom the dews of life’s 
morning sparkle in purity. And the years, ever rest¬ 
less, glide by. 

Another springtime has come; and the girl, now a 
maiden fair, stands by the rosebush whose buds, half¬ 
open as in wonder, fill the air with dewy fragrance. 
The maiden presses her hand to her throbbing heart, 
for she stands trembling now in the tumultuous rapture 
of love. And the years, ever restless, glide by. 

Another springtime has come; and the sweet scent 
of roses floods the air, and a young woman fair, with 
rose blossoms in her hair, stands at the altar by the side 
of a young man. They take the vows that make them 
husband and wife. And the years, ever restless, glide 

by- 

Once more springtime has come. It is an early 
morning hour. The drowsing, droning crow of cocks 
floats out upon the air. The rising sun throws its 

7 


8 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


charming rays athwart the infinite, tender sky, and 
changes earth’s common pale streams into gold with 
heavenly alchemy. We enter a certain room and see 
a large bouquet of roses fully opened, standing upon 
the dresser, and every rose, by reason of its reflection 
in the mirror, holds forth the beauty of two. By the 
side of the bed we see the young man whom we saw 
at the altar in the last act. He is looking down with 
serious mien. He is thinking of the commonplace: 
how he once was a baby and now is a man; how he 
once was called “son,” and now is called “father”; how 
he received from his parents his very existence, his 
physique and form, his disposition and tendencies, and 
yet how he is absolutely responsible for what he is, 
and guilty for any defects in his character—so seriously 
he stands by the bed and thinks. And in the bed, all 
pale and pure, is our heroine, touching the fluffy, silk- 
soft hair of her baby; smoothing down the little 
dresses; holding the little unshod feet within her girl¬ 
ish hands, and kissing the eyelids drooping down in 
earth’s first helpless sleep—she is happy, so happy, she 
seems to be lulled in the lap of endless peace, for she 
has been crowned with the glory of womanhood : moth¬ 
erhood. And the years, ever restless, glide by. 

Thus a new family has come into existence, and an¬ 
other home has been established. 

The Foundation of All Social Order 

Social progress has been profoundly affected by the 
sex and parental impulses and tendencies, especially as 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


9 

they have developed in such primary groups as the 
family. 

The earliest form of family life with which history 
acquaints us is called the metronymic family, or the 
matriarchate. In this the mother was the head of the 
family, doubtless because she was the one stable feature 
in nomadic tribes. But as the earlier people turned to 
the keeping of flocks and herds, and the settling of 
small groups over wide areas; and as the pastoral in¬ 
dustry passed more and more into control of the men 
folks, and as the women captured in war were deemed 
the property of the men who captured them, the head¬ 
ship of the family passed away from the mother to 
the father. 

The patriarchal family was the one where the father 
was the head, chief, and priest of the family. This 
was the type of family pictured in the earlier parts of 
the Old Testament, which still prevails in certain parts 
of China, and which characterized our Puritan ances¬ 
tors in America. It was this type of family that led to 
ancestral worship, and, indeed, the Roman family ex¬ 
isted largely for the sake of perpetuating the worship 
of ancestors. Ancestor worship rests upon the mystery 
of life. This is the explanation of the household gods 
among the Romans. The Lares were simply the guar¬ 
dians of ancestors; the Penates were providing spirits 
for the family; the Manes were the souls of the de¬ 
parted. There was an altar in every home upon which 
burned the sacred fire of the hearth. The father was 
the priest, and thus was stressed the importance of 


IO 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


every man being the father of at least one male de¬ 
scendant. The chastity of woman did not suffer 
thereby, for women were supposed to raise warriors 
for future wars. And yet women and children among 
pagans were considered only as property. 

After awhile the patriarchal family life in Rome de¬ 
cayed. The religious authority of the father broke 
down. It was conceded that he had a right to divide 
his property among all his children, which soon led to 
a concession of his right to divide it among those who 
were not his descendants. By the fourth century be¬ 
fore the Christian era women were granted the right 
of divorcing their husbands. Not only had religious 
beliefs decayed, but Rome had copied the habits and 
vices from the countries which she had captured. All 
of these things led to the decadence of the patriarchal 
family. Then came Christianity, a religion of real 
force. The teaching of Christ concerning friendship 
was very strong, and he held up marriage as the cul¬ 
mination of the most exalted kind of friendship. The 
Christian teaching was, “Husbands, love your wives 
as your own bodies.” Conjugal love was shown to be 
a duty and obligation forever springing from the 
Christian reason and conscience, lending a solemnity 
and stability to the marriage bond. 

Polygamy, that form of marriage where one man has 
several wives, has existed to some extent in all ages. 
It is historically and essentially an institution of bar¬ 
barism. 

Monogamy is that form of marriage where one man 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


ii 


has one wife. It is the Christian kind. In it children 
have better care. Affection of the highest and holiest 
type is produced. Family relationships are simpler, 
more definite, and more cohesive. It not only cares for 
helpless children but makes more tolerable friendless 
old age. 

It is this kind of a family life that is the foundation 
of all government and of all social order. 

Because the hearthstone is the cornerstone of so¬ 
ciety; because the church, the community, and the 
state root in the home life, and draw from it their 
spirit, strength, and safety; because the honoring of 
God begins with the honoring of parents, God has built 
a wall of protection around the home, known as the 
fifth commandment, which says, “Honor thy father 
and thy mother.” 

What Does “Honor” Mean? 

Honor is like a sunbeam. It quickens and inspires; 
gives color and beauty; coaxes into flower and fruit¬ 
age. Did you ever see a scientist take a sunbeam, and 
pass it through a prism, letting it fall upon a globe 
in which certain chemicals were mixed ? And did you 
hear the sunbeam sing? When honor falls upon a 
rightly ordered home, where parents and children are, 
the home life becomes an oratorio, singing melodies 
and harmonies of fireside devotion and mutual service, 
sacrifice and sympathy. And did you ever see a scien¬ 
tist take a sunbeam, and, transmitting it through a 
prism, decompose it into its component colors ? On the 


12 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


one side of the prism you saw the white sunbeam: on 
the other side you saw the violet, and indigo, and blue, 
and green, and yellow, and orange, and red. If we 
take this word “honor” as it occurs in this command¬ 
ment, and pass it through the prism of scriptural sense, 
breaking it up into its component parts, we will see 
that it has the idea of obedience, and esteem, and rev¬ 
erence, and due veneration. Let us place emphasis 
upon some of these. 

1. Of course obedience is enjoined upon children 
who have not reached years of personal responsibility. 
Obedience simple, direct, absolute; obedience that 
gladly leaps to do the will of father or mother; obedi¬ 
ence that is not accompanied by growling and com¬ 
plaining; obedience behind the parent’s back, as well as 
in his presence. Love is the basis and inspiration of 
all true obedience. Sacrifice may be slavish and heart¬ 
less, but true obedience is a delight. The home is a 
school founded by God, and the first great lesson to be 
learned is the lesson of obedience. We are to learn 
to obey our rulers and our God by first obeying our 
parents. Obeying our parents paves the way for 
obedience to Christ, and loving obedience to Christ is 
the road to eternal blessedness. 

2. As the years bring personal accountability and 
responsibility to the son or daughter, honor changes 
color in a certain sense, and obedience gives place to 
respect. Our obedience is to be touched by emotion, 
our respect shined through with love. Jesus clearly 
taught that no Pharisaic word like the Pharisees’ “cor- 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


13 


ban” could release a man from loving and serving aged 
and helpless parents to the end of their days, even as 
they had loved and cared for him in his helpless in¬ 
fancy and unstable childhood. 

“But,” says one, “my parents are not worthy of 
respect. They are selfish, vicious, and sinful.” I do 
not say that we are to obey them if they command that 
which is wrong, for in every such instance they cease 
to have any claim upon our conscience. “Children, 
obey your parents—in the Lord.” That is the ex¬ 
planatory qualification. Youth has a right to resist 
that which is not in the Lord. We certainly are not 
required to give obedience to an earthly father when 
such obedience means disobedience to the will of our 
heavenly Father—God. Nevertheless, the command¬ 
ment remains, and while we must not do that which is 
wrong, and cannot sanction our parents' profligacy, 
yet they are our parents and are to receive our honor. 

Here is a young man or a young woman who has 
been away to college. Now, the really educated per¬ 
son feels that he has simply touched the edge of knowl¬ 
edge, like a caterpillar that has nibbled off the edge of 
one leaf on a tree in the midst of a forest of trees all 
covered with leaves. But this young man or woman 
comes back from school, and feels that father and 
mother are rather to be pitied because they know so 
little. Really, it would be ridiculous for them to expect 
respect from this son or daughter now! But have we 
not sometimes discovered that the shrewd, genuine, un¬ 
alloyed wisdom of an unlettered parent so far tran- 


14 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


scends the shallow assumption of a college-bred off¬ 
spring that a comparison becomes a contrast? Further 
than that, it is well for us to remember that by far the 
larger part of the sum of human knowledge was known 
to men before the present generation was bom, and the 
sun of science will not set when we die. 

Here is a young fellow who started to work when he 
was sixteen, eighteen, or twenty years of age. And 
since he has been making his own money for a while he 
cannot understand how it would be possible for him 
to owe anything to his parents. But all that is the mat¬ 
ter with him is that he has forgotten about those years 
before he earned a cent, when he was in his parents’ 
hands and in their hearts. 

Sometimes, in our day, by reason of the advantages 
of education and money-making enjoyed by the chil¬ 
dren which were not enjoyed by the parents, the chil¬ 
dren come to feel themselves in a different “social 
class” from their parents. All this talk about “caste” 
and “social class” is absolutely un-American and un- 
Christian. It is detestable, diabolical. Do we feel 
ashamed of our father and mother in the clothes they 
wear? Are we grieved when they make a break in 
grammar or a breach in etiquette ? Are we mortified 
to think that they ever blackened their shoes with stove¬ 
blacking, and “wiped their faces” with a gunny-sack 
towel, and drank their coffee out of a saucer, and ate 
their food with a knife, and said “done it” where they 
should have said “did it” and “have saw” when they 
should have said “have seen” ? But one of these times 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


15 


there will be a sickly pallor on the cold cheek of the 
dying night, and we will go out on a long journey, not 
because we desire it, but because we must; and we will 
not come back any more. Then the important ques¬ 
tion will not be, “Did you always speak in the best 
grammatical forms?”—it is a fine thing to do that— 
but the supreme question will be, “Do you know the 
language of the redeemed of the Lord?” The test 
will not be, “What kind of clothes did you wear?”— 
it is nice to have good clothes here—but the important 
question will be, “Have you put on the seamless robe of 
Christ’s righteousness?” The test will not be, “In 
what kind of a house did you live?”—it is nice to have 
a fine house—but the supreme question will be, “Have 
you a place in the Father’s house of many mansions?” 
The test will not be, “Did you belong to the aristocracy 
of ancient families, or of wealth, or of culture?” but 
“Do you belong to the aristocracy of character?” 

Not only by obedience and respect may we honor our 
parents, but let us honor them by being out-and-out 
Christians. The best way in which we can honor our 
parents is by making the heart of their child the dwell¬ 
ing place of the Christ—“Christ in you, the hope of 
glory”—not only glory hereafter, but glory here and 
now—the glory of a godly character. 

Why Should We Honor Our Parents? 

There are many reasons why we should honor them. 
Let me mention four. 

First of all, God commands it. And if we do not 



i6 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


honor our parents we are breaking the law of God. 
"Weighed in the balances and found wanting” will be 
the judgment spoken against us. 

A second reason why we should honor our parents 
is the fact that this is the only commandment we may 
not be able always to keep. The time may come when 
we would like to recall some of the things we now so 
thoughtlessly say and undo some of the things we now 
do without any care seemingly as to their effect. 

We find the third reason in Saint Paul’s comment 
on this commandment: "It is right.” And so it is. In 
spite of what we may think ourselves now, it is very 
likely true that there was a time when we were not 
very attractive. But our parents loved us and rejoiced 
in us and cared for us. And then think back to that 
time when we were sick. Do we remember, or did we 
know, how mother cared for us? Her hand was on 
our brow; she watched the time to give us our medi¬ 
cine; she stayed up when others were sleeping, watch¬ 
ing by our bedside. And for us her tears fell to the 
earth and her prayers ascended to God. And have we 
forgotten how father and mother toiled and planned 
and saved that we might be given a good start ? And 
did \^e notice how they wore their superannuated 
clothes that we might get an education? 

The fourth reason for honoring our parents is in 
the promise attached to the commandment. Perhaps 
the first significance of this promise is national. And 
it is undoubtedly true that if the rising generation 
honor their parents they will hold as a sacred trust the 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 




heritage of government they receive from them. Nat¬ 
urally, such a conservatism and loyalty insure long 
national life. But the promise also has a personal and 
individual application. For the young man who starts 
out in life by honoring his parents is on the right track 
to a pure and virtuous life, and clean habits are.a first 
requisite for a happy long life. 

Household Ethics 

The best training of a child begins with the ethics 
of its grandparents half a century before the child is 
born, and when the child does come into the world, 
parents and teachers ought to be everlastingly on their 
guard to develop the highest morality. It would be 
well for all parents to familiarize themselves with some 
such work as Ray C. Beery’s Practical Child Training, 
as put out by the Parents Association (New York). 
We find there such definite aims as to teach a child 
sympathy and altruism by enlisting his sympathetic 
care for the injured, the unfortunate, the ill; the sub¬ 
stitution of love for hatred, the enjoyment of giving 
pleasure to others, the restraint from dominating other 
members of the famify, the uprooting of jealousy by 
giving a widened viewpoint, the etiquette of kindness 
and courtesy, consideration in shopping, the keeping 
silent during music, reading, or other entertainment; 
the inculcation of absolute truthfulness from the start 
by being truthful oneself, by making truth attractive, 
by showing that lies and dishonesty are awkward, by 
helping the child to distinguish between fancy and 


18 THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 

falsehood; the avoiding tempting a child to steal; the 
imparting a true idea of money values from the first, 
the keeping a balance between recklessness and miserli¬ 
ness in money matters, teaching a child to respect and 
love the God of nature, the assuring a child that God 
cares for him in the dark and at all times when he feels 
lonely and timid, the leading of a child to feel the rest¬ 
fulness of church services and to be in a worshipful 
frame of mind while in church; teaching him to find 
good in everything and to appreciate the beauties of 
the world around him. 

Democracy in the Home 

Spencer says that the ideal for the home is ‘To pro¬ 
duce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to 
be governed by others.” A home in which the dem¬ 
ocratic regime prevails presupposes a certain attitude 
on the part of both the parents and the children. Most 
conflicts in our homes are the conflicts between the 
matured and the maturing. The parents feel strongly 
that there are certain “duties” which the children 
ought to perform, and the children are disposed to 
think that the exactions of the parents are “not fair.” 

The parents must come to an appreciation of the 
fact that they are not the creators of a moment: they 
are the builders of a life. They cannot “farm out” 
their unmet responsibilities to a Sunday school or a 
public school or any other agency. They must some 
way or other find time to interest themselves in the 
physical, intellectual, and moral welfare of their chil- 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


*9 


dren. Intellectual companionship is necessary. There 
was a decided advantage in the old-time habit of read¬ 
ing aloud in the home. It was far and away superior 
to the present inane dissipation of the cards and the 

u • yy 

movie. 

Parents should say and do before their children the 
thing that is affirmatively and persuasively right, rather 
than to multiply the “don’ts.” If the old command¬ 
ment reads, '‘Children, honor your parents” on one 
side; on the other side it reads, “Parents, be worthy of 
honor.” 

Parents should inculcate in their homes the unmis¬ 
takable ideal that service, not pleasure-seeking, is the 
supreme end of life. 

Down with the instinct of parental proprietorship! 
The parents should treat their children with respect. 
A child has a right to live its own life, and to develop 
its own personality under freedom. 

The strain upon household democracy would be re¬ 
lieved if parents would cease thinking of themselves 
as benefactors, and if children would only remember 
that adolescence or post-adolescence does not nullify 
or abrogate all of the relationships and conditions of 
earlier life. 

Democracy in the home, while it treats the children 
as human beings and not as property, does not do away 
with discipline. There is no contradiction between 
democracy and discipline: self-discipline is the disci¬ 
pline of democracy. It does not do away with the idea 
of authority. Rebellion must be quelled wherever it 


20 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


shows its head. Froude says, “In schools and colleges, 
in fleet and army, discipline means success, and other¬ 
wise ruin.” He might have included the home. In 
too many homes to-day there is an utter lack of self- 
restraint and consequently of self-respect. We should 
never commit the error of thinking that rudeness is 
freedom. 

The despotism of a child in the home is as abomina¬ 
ble as is the despotism of a parent. An understanding 
comradeship means that children will let parents have 
their adventure at whatever cost to the children. The 
parents must be just as free to live their lives as the 
children are to live theirs. 

If only the children and the parents alike would 
learn to be tolerant of the opinions of others! All dis¬ 
agreements should be on the impersonal level. 

The children ought to know that one reason why 
the parent’s “rules” seem irksome is because the parent, 
in love, yearns to bestow upon the children the fruits 
of experience without the children having to pay the 
price. One reason why the child seems so willful to 
the parent is because the child insists upon acquiring 
the wisdom of life through personal experience. Why 
do they not cultivate a tolerant spirit in acknowledg¬ 
ing that the purpose of each is good, but that in prac¬ 
tice both are wrong? 

Let parents help youth to understand the strange up¬ 
heaval of emotions struggling with one another for 
supremacy, and point out to them the ideals of truly 
glorious and upright living. 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


21 


“Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but 
bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the 
Lord.” “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for 
this is right.” 

Foolish Youth 

Music is not the only thing that has been “jazzed” in 
our day. Everywhere there seems to be a recrudes¬ 
cence of savagery. Many young people think that 
life means riotous license. Many of them are unable 
to see beyond the dance and dress and “spooning.” 
A sex madness has struck too many of the people of 
this day. 

The editor of a woman’s magazine recently pointed 
out that “in one year 9,846 girls wrote to me about 
beauty problems, and 1,776 asked advice with respect 
to other problems, ‘the throbbing, vital questions that 
beset the social and business life of the modern girl.’ ” 

Another magazine, a couple of years ago, published 
a number of articles by bachelors on “Why they 
wouldn’t marry the modern girl.” The first writer 
says that the modern girl is too “easy”; she is blase, 
because of her experimental attitude toward life which 
prompts her to “try it once.” The second one objects 
to her because he fears that she will not make a home, 
that she will be more of a parasite than a partner; that 
she is simply looking for a “good thing.” 

The third one says that the modern girl wants only 
to be popular with men and lives for nothing hut a 
good time. 


o o 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


The fourth one thinks that she would not be a pal 
and a partner; that she would not intelligently share in 
both his victories and defeats. 

The fifth one objects to her because she is selfish 
and superficial. 

The sixth one hesitates to marry her because she is 
afflicted with an insatiable romanticism; to her mar¬ 
riage as a permanent tie would be irksome. 

It would be interesting to know what reasons a half- 
dozen maidens would give for not marrying the mod¬ 
ern young man. The life of a foolish young man is as 
“jazzy” as the life of the foolish girl. 

When Youth Looks Forward to Marriage 

Young people should look forward to marriage as 
a sacred goal, and prepare for it even more carefully 
than one prepares for a life profession. 

The youth of America should not accept the ro¬ 
mantic novel as the principal teacher in matters of 
marriage and the home. They ought to turn blind 
eyes and deaf ears to much that is current on the 
stage and in the “movie” and the popular conversation 
of the day concerning the sex drama and the “triangle” 
love affairs. 

Marriage should always be more than a matter of 
individual convenience or of self-gratification. 

Economic and Housing Considerations 

The material conditions of life must be subordinated 
to the social and spiritual values of the home. There 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


23 


is no doubt but that the rise in standards of living, the 
present necessity of purchasing supplies instead of 
making them at home, the prolonged schooling of 
children, the increased expense of birth, marriage, sick¬ 
ness, and death, the heavier taxation, the expenditures 
for cultural and club life, all tend toward the pecuniary 
disadvantage of the family. That is, the economic mo¬ 
tive is not favorable to marriage. 

The question of wages and the hours of labor pro¬ 
foundly affect the home life. If a man does not get 
money enough to maintain a decent home, and if he 
doesn’t have leisure enough to build his own person¬ 
ality into the life of the family, it is impossible to build 
an ideal home. 

The housing situation is vastly important. We ad¬ 
mit that the home is more than the house, as the soul is 
more than the body. Nevertheless, as the condition of 
the body reacts upon the soul, so the housing condition 
reacts upon the home life. The overcrowding of land 
or the overcrowding of houses is disastrous to both 
morals and health in the home. 

The ideal toward which we move is a home owned 
by each family with a bit of ground where they can 
plant their own things and develop a certain fixity. 
But in 1920, 54.4 per cent of the houses in the United 
States were rented, and only 45.6 per cent were owned 
by those occupying them. More than one third of the 
owned homes were encumbered with mortgages. 

If we really want to develop progressive and efficient 
industrial, social, and moral communities, we must 


24 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


have sanitary dwellings, privacy for individual fam¬ 
ilies, uncongested or uncrowded dwellings, abundance 
of sunlight and fresh air in all dwellings, accessibility to 
schools and to breathing spaces, rentals within the in¬ 
come of the heads of all families, a reasonable and de¬ 
cent system of rent collection, and opportunities for 
thrifty families to purchase their own homes. 

The Social Motive 

But important as these economic factors are, they 
must not be the deciding factor, for the economic mo¬ 
tive is against marriage. The family must be sup¬ 
ported by a social consciousness. The family is a pri¬ 
mary group in human society. It is a primary social¬ 
izing agency. It must be nurtured and preserved or 
the very foundations of our social structure will crum¬ 
ble. It is in the family that the child gets the main 
education in social attitudes. The family is the nat¬ 
ural and historical place for the development of such 
ideals as love, service, sacrifice for the sake of others, 
motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood. 

Domestic Instability 

Domestic instability is fast becoming a nation-wide 
epidemic social disease among us. According to the 
census reports, the number of marriages solemnized 
in 1896 was 602,542; in 1906, the number was 838,- 
451; and in 1916, the number was 1,040,778. In those 
same three years the number of divorces granted were 
as follows : In 1896, the number was 42,937; in 1906, 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


25 


the number of divorces was 72,062; while in 1916, the 
number of divorces granted was 112,036. It might be 
stated a little more graphically in this way: that for 
every 100,000 people in the United States in 1906 
there were 1,020 marriages performed, and at the same 
time there were 73 divorces granted; in 1916, for 
every 100,000 people of the United States, 1,050 mar¬ 
riages w^ere solemnized, while in the same year, 112 
couples were separated by divorce. We do not have 
as yet the marriage and divorce statistics for the whole 
nation for any year later than 1916; but we do know 
that the rate has been increasing. We know, for in¬ 
stance, that the number of divorces is increasing three 
times as fast as the population is increasing. In Den¬ 
ver during 1922, 3,000 marriage licenses were granted, 
and 1,300 divorce suits were filed. It is a safe guess 
that as many separations occurred without filing di¬ 
vorce suits. In Chicago, during 1922, 39,000 marriage 
licenses were granted, and 14,000 divorce decrees were 
signed. More than that number had been applied for, 
and a lot of people had snapped the marriage bond 
without the formalities of an application for divorce. 

Back of the divorce evil lies our modern attitude to¬ 
ward marriage. Ask those thousands of persons who 
have filed suit for divorce the following questions, and 
see what answers you get: How do you view mar¬ 
riage? Do you think of it as simply a civil contract? 
Do you think that you can take a husband or wife on 
probation for a while, and then annul the marriage if 
it does not result as you had hoped? Do you think 


26 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


that any slight provocation, any incompatibility of tem¬ 
perament, any want of common interest is a sufficient 
ground for divorce? 

We ought to have a uniform divorce law. This 
would put an end to “divorce colonies” and to the 
pettifogging of divorce lawyers. Divorce must be 
made as difficult as possible, consistent with justice. 
Jesus was definite and explicit as to the ground on 
which divorce should be granted: “Whosoever shall 
put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall 
marry another, committeth adultery: and he that mar- 
rieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.” 
Jesus viewed divorce as an awful kind of vivisection, 
a ruthless mangling of soul and body, tragic, cruel, 
pitiful. 

When a man and woman are married, Jesus says, 
“They are no more two, but one flesh.” According to 
his teaching, marriage is for two, and two only, so long 
as they both shall live. For a man even to look upon 
another woman to lust after her is to commit adultery 
already with her in the heart. Every kind of argument 
for divorce, whether it be unhappy home, uncongenial 
temper, a new affinity, or what-not, is answered by the 
calm statement of Jesus: “What therefore God hath 
joined together, let not man put asunder.” 

Importance of Rightly Ordered Homes 

There are many agencies in the world, ordained of 
God, that are doing effective work toward bringing in 
the reign of righteousness. All these things are a joy, 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


27 


but we must admit that a great deal of beneficence has 
not begun its work at the beginning. Home is the 
fountain-head that is filling every nook and corner of 
the world with human life that is an honor to God or a 
shame to man himself. The home is the unit of so¬ 
ciety. The community, the state, and the church root 
in the home life and draw from it, to some extent, their 
character, spirit, strength, and safety. The home is a 
divinely ordained institution. The authority of the 
marriage relation lies deeper than human legislation. 
It rests upon the law of God, and, therefore, has the 
twofold sanction of divine and human authority. 

The word “home’ , is one of the richest in our lan¬ 
guage. It is so because of that which it symbolizes and 
suggests. It includes location and condition, place and 
atmosphere. The place, or location, appeals very 
strongly to the human being. The distinctive customs 
in a household gather around very simple things, such 
as the material equipment which is the common prop¬ 
erty of the family. An especially powerful place is 
held in memory by those things that become subjects 
of debate, such as some big and easy chair that the 
parents like to sit in and the children like to curl up in, 
and yet which is rather unsightly, being the repository 
for everything, especially memories; the personal prop¬ 
erty which youngsters have in their own rooms and 
about which cluster certain rites illustrative of their 
eccentricities; the very place occupied at the table, and 
the kinds of food most liked—all such trivialities as 
these become infinitely more than trivialities: they be- 


28 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


come customs that are a stabilizing element in mo¬ 
ments of bewilderment and wavering in later life. The 
family that establishes a custom establishes an abiding 
thing. 

But the condition and atmosphere are more than 
location or place in the making of a home. The house 
is not the home in the higher meaning of the term. It 
is the place in which the home is made. Mutual love, 
service, sacrifice, and sympathy are essential to the 
true home. 


Household Religion 

One reason why the influence of a good home is so 
abiding is because it is genuine. The home is no place 
for pretense or posing. Whether sick or well, sad or 
joyous, we are in the home what we actually are. Gen¬ 
uine Christian character shines with a radiancy that is 
not to be found in any other relationship of life. 

Another secret of the power of household religion 
is the fact that it is constant. It is not one hour one 
day a week, as is the Sunday school. It is not six hours 
a day, five days a week, as is the public school. It is 
all the time, year in and year out. 

Another contributing factor to the importance of 
household religion is the fact that it is so permanent. 
If an old chair of our childhood home held everything, 
and especially memories in later years, how much more 
steadying is the memory of the family altar. What a 
sin-deterring influence this daily pausing in business 
and social activities to read the Word of God, and to 


YOUTH AND THE FAMILY 


29 


kneel in prayer together has been to the members of 
the family! What a harmonizing influence it is, the 
daily mending up of little breaks in family concord and 
affection at the family altar! I am wondering if the 
radio services on Sunday afternoons now heard in 
millions of American homes may not, at least to some 
extent, restore the lost and forgotten family altar. 

Not only does it throw a safeguard around the boys 
and girls when they get out into worldly life, but house¬ 
hold religion looks ahead. The church of to-morrow 
gains its members and its strength out of the homes 
which honor God to-day. The family that is truly re¬ 
ligious has the church papers and keeps informed con¬ 
cerning the movements of the Christian Church and 
its denomination. 

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” 


CHAPTER II 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 

In 1920 there were enrolled in the public grade 
schools of the United States 19,378,927 pupils and in 
the public high schools 2,186,862. The enrollment in 
the private grade schools that year was 1,515,244 and 
in the private high schools 184,153. There were en¬ 
rolled in all the educational institutions of the United 
States above the rank of high schools, that is, the 
seminaries, colleges, universities, etc., 684,550 stu¬ 
dents. This does not include 336,032 students en¬ 
rolled in private commercial and business schools nor 
586,843 enrolled in evening schools that year. 

In every State there is now a period of compulsory 
attendance at school. In most of the States the com¬ 
pulsory attendance age is from seven or eight 
to fourteen or seventeen. In twenty-five of the States 
attendance is not required after completing the ele¬ 
mentary grades. In one State attendance is not re¬ 
quired after completing the fourth grade, in one State 
not after the fifth grade and in three States not after 
the sixth grade. In six States attendance is not re¬ 
quired after completing the high-school course. In 
six States there is no exemption: the children must go 
until they reach the age limit whether it be fourteen or 
sixteen years. Some of the States do not state the 

30 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


3i 

attendance requirement, and one State sets the limit 
upon ability to read and write. 

We were shocked at the extent of illiteracy in the 
United States as revealed by a study of the four mil¬ 
lion men enlisted for service in the World War. It 
is fair to presume that the young men in the army 
represent a cross-section of the whole population. It 
was seen that practically one fourth of them were 
illiterate in the primitive, simple sense of the word. If 
we add to that number the persons of slight or in¬ 
sufficient education, we have one half of the whole 
population of the land either illiterate or with very 
meager education. The United States Census for 
1920 shows that six per cent of the total population 
above ten years of age is illiterate; that two and five 
tenths per cent of the native whites of native parentage 
are illiterate; that eight tenths of one per cent of the 
native whites of foreign or mixed parentage are 
illiterate; that thirteen and one tenth per cent of the 
foreign-born whites are illiterate; and that twenty-two 
and nine tenths per cent of the Negroes are illiterate. 
These figures do not include persons who are able to 
write their own names. Former Secretary Lane esti¬ 
mated that perhaps twenty per cent of the citizenship 
were illiterate. 

The kind of schoolhouses which the young people 
attend are an important factor. Whether the schools 
be in city or country, the ill-ventilated, overcrowded, 
poorly equipped schoolroom constitutes a great handi¬ 
cap in the work of education. The schoolhouse is 


32 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


more important than the public buildings at the State 
and national capitals. 

The young people in the schools of to-day are gain¬ 
ing the conceptions of life and forming the bent of 
character that will determine what this nation is to be, 
what its laws are to be, and its usefulness in the world 
of to-morrow. The school is the cradle of the nation's 
future greatness. It is democratic. It is an education 
in citizenship. It is the nursery of the American spirit. 
It is doing more than merely acquainting the young 
people with the correct use of the English language 
and of certain historical, geographical, mathematical, 
and physiological facts. To be sure, it is doing this. 
It is sharpening their wits. It is set to make them 
mentally more efficient. But in addition to all of this, 
it is, to some extent, the mold into which plastic and 
mobile spirits are poured to be shaped for the future. 

Getting at the Facts 

Believing that if certain questions were honestly an¬ 
swered by the youth of our schools, it would give me 
a chance to phrase a message for the youth of 
America, I prepared a questionnaire, which, through 
the kindness of the principals of three of Pittsburgh’s 
high schools, I was enabled to place before 1,131 stu¬ 
dents. The questionnaire is composed of twenty-three 
questions, which on the surface are quite innocent and 
without point, but the answers to some of which are 
quite self-revealing. I selected three high schools, one 
of which is an old school attended by a thoroughly 


/ 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 33 

representative crowd, many of them from old Ameri¬ 
can families and many also foreign or of foreign 
inheritance. I took this school because it was repre¬ 
sentative of the old type of American community. 

The second high school selected is a newer one in a 
new suburban part of the city. It represents one of the 
most resourceful types of American citizenship. 

The third high school’s student body is made up 
almost wholly of Jewish and foreign young people. 
It was taken to discover the ideas and ideals which they 
are forming. 

The questionnaire was submitted at one time to a 
cross-section of the entire school. There was no select¬ 
ing of any particular type of student. The boys and 
girls were about equal in number. They had no chance 
to confer with one another. The questions were an¬ 
swered honestly. 

The Results 

The same questionnaire was submitted to students 
in the Carnegie Institute of Technology. I have not 
worked out the percentages from the Carnegie Insti¬ 
tute of Technology as I have from the three high 
schools, for the answers do not differ sufficiently to 
make it worth while, excepting in two or three cases, 
and these cases will be noted in the comments upon the 
different answers. 

Of the 1,131 students answering the questionnaire, 
576 were girls and 555 were boys. 

In the first high school, the typical old American and 


34 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


mixed community, the questionnaire was answered by 
161 Protestant girls, 2 Jewish girls, 43 Roman 
Catholic girls, and 22 girls not belonging to any 
church, or a total of 228. 

In the second high school the new suburban com¬ 
munity of generally resourceful Americans, the ques¬ 
tionnaire was answered by 116 Protestant girls, 2 
Jewish girls, 17 Roman Catholic girls, and 21 girls 
not belonging to any church, or a total of 156. 

In the third high school the one located in a Jewish 
and foreign community, the questionnaire was an¬ 
swered by 26 Protestant girls, no Jewish girls, 23 
Roman Catholic girls, and 33 girls not belonging to 
any church, or a total of 192 girls. 

It will be seen that this makes a total in the three 
schools of 303 Protestant girls, 114 Jewish girls, 83 
Roman Catholic girls, and 76 girls not belonging to 
any church, or a grand total of 576 girls. 

The boys answering the questionnaire were distrib¬ 
uted as follows: in the first high school, 150 Prot¬ 
estants, 3 Jews, 43 Roman Catholics, and 33 boys not 
belonging to any church, or a total of 229 boys in the 
first school. 

Boys in the second high school: 102 Protestants, 
1 Jew, 25 Roman Catholics, and 22 not belonging to 
any church, or a total of 150 boys. 

Boys in the third high school: 21 Protestants, 84 
Jews, 38 Roman Catholics, and 33 not belonging to 
any church, or a total of 176 boys. 

Thus the grand total of boys in the three schools is: 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


35 


273 Protestants, 88 Jews, 106 Roman Catholics, 88 
not belonging to any church, or a grand total of 555 
boys. 

Some of the questions and answers are worthy of 
comment in our study of the youth of America, and 
especially when we are thinking of youth and edu¬ 
cation. 


How Much Schooling? 

In answer to the question: “How much schooling 
are you planning for?” of all of the Protestant girls 
in the three schools, 46 per cent have no intention of 
going beyond the high school, while 54 per cent expect 
to go into some college or other school after finishing 
high school. Of the Jewish girls, 68 per cent will 
stop with high school, and 32 per cent want to go to 
college or some other school. Of the Roman Catholic 
girls, 65 per cent are going to stop with high school, 
and 35 per cent hope to go beyond it. Of the “no 
church” girls, 54 per cent will stop with the high 
school, and 46 per cent hope to go beyond it. Of the 
total 576 girls, 54 per cent are not looking beyond 
the high school, while 46 per cent hope to go to col¬ 
lege. 

The answers of the boys to this question are as fol¬ 
lows: Protestant boys who are planning for high 
school only, 28 per cent; who are hoping to go to col¬ 
lege, 72 per cent; Jewish boys who will stop with high 
school, 22 per cent; who hope to go to college, 78 per 
cent; Roman Catholic boys who will stop with high 


3 ^ 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


school, 42 per cent; who hope to go to college, 58 per 
cent; “no-church” boys who will stop with high school, 
26 per cent; who hope to go to college, 74 per cent. 
Of the total number of 555 boys, 29 per cent are not 
looking beyond the high school, and 71 per cent hope 
to go to college or some other school after completing 
the high school course. 

It will be seen that the Protestant girls are much 
more ambitious in this respect than any other group 
of girls. It will also be seen that the Jewish boys are 
more ambitious than any other group. Also, a much 
higher percentage of the boys as a whole intend to go 
to college than the girls. Without doubt a much 
higher proportion of the young people of the high 
schools of to-day are looking to technical, professional, 
or college work beyond the high schools than w r as so a 
few years ago. Of course not all of those who plan 
to go to college will actually get there; but their ex¬ 
pressed intention is interesting. 

A study of Who's Who in America, a book which 
contains biographical sketches of the more prominent 
people in the United States, reveals the fact that col¬ 
lege graduates furnish one hundred and fifty times 
as many successful men of to-day as their numbers 
warrant, while those below the rank of college 

o 

graduates furnish less than one half as many as their 
numbers merit. That is, the prospects of success in 
the first class are three hundred times as great as in 
the second. 

The value of a college education is not primarily in 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


37 


the number of scientific, historical, and literary facts 
which the student learns; but in the training of the 
mind to think. 

Self-Culture Through Reading 

In answer to the question: “What is the Recrea¬ 
tion or Amusement you like best, and why?” reading 
was named by 16 per cent of the Protestant girls, 
30 per cent of the Jewish girls, by 16 per cent of the 
Roman Catholic girls, and by 33 per cent of the “no¬ 
church” girls; or of the 576 girls, 21 per cent of them 
said they preferred reading to any other form of rec¬ 
reation or amusement. 

In answer to the same question, reading was named 
by 5 per cent of the Protestant boys, 17 per cent of 
the Jewish boys, 5 per cent of the Roman Catholic 
boys, and 7 per cent of the “no-church” boys; or, 
in other words, of the 550 boys, reading was chosen 
by 7 per cent. 

In answer to the question: “What do you do with 
your spare time?” reading was chosen by 54 per cent 
of the Protestant girls, 72 per cent of the Jewish girls, 
37 per cent of the Roman Catholic girls, and 43 per 
cent of the “no-church” girls. That is, of the 576 
girls, 54 per cent named reading as the use they make 
of their spare time. 

In answer to the same question, reading was chosen 
by 34 per cent of the Protestant boys, 45 per cent of 
the Jewish boys, 39 per cent of the Roman Catholic 
boys, and 37 per cent of the “no-church” boys. That 


3 « 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


is, of the 555 boys, 36 per cent named reading as their 
favorite use of their spare time. 

I am not saying here what is the ideal form of 
recreation or amusement for the youth of America, 
and I am not saying what is the best use of their spare 
time. I am simply calling attention to the number 
who indicated reading as their choice. For all young 
people, and especially those who will never have the 
opportunity to go to college, I want to suggest that 
the supreme privilege of our civilization to-day is not 
the Victrola or the telephone or the radio, but books 
and mind husbandry for all through reading. Every¬ 
body can get books. They are as cheap as bread, and 
every city has its public library. Carlyle once said 
that “all that mankind has done, thought, or been is 
lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books/’ 
Many of the world’s most eminent men acquired an 
excellent education mainly by reading. By self-effort, 
self-discipline, self-schooling, Benjamin Franklin 
educated himself so well that haughty English lords 
and incredulous French scientists were surprised at 
the extent of his knowledge. 

Abraham Lincoln, who had possibly one year’s 
schooling “by littles,” is a conspicuous example of the 
education that may be attained by carefully reading 
even only a few well-selected books. Other examples 
might be named, but these will suffice. 

It is simply amazing how much one might accom¬ 
plish if he would but improve odds and ends of time 
in keen, analytical observing, thinking, reading, study- 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


39 


ing. But you say, “I have no time!” You have all 
the time there is. Here is the constantly recurring 
miracle: a day of twenty-four hours is given to each 
person alike. The man who has two hundred mil¬ 
lion dollars cannot buy a minute more than is given to 
the man who does not possess a cent. Time is the 
stuff out of which is woven the fabric of life on the 
great loom of purpose. What do you do with the 
fragments of time? How many hours do you work 
a day? Ten hours? I think eight hours are enough; 
but let us suppose that you work ten. And then you 
sleep eight hours—that is long enough for anybody 
but babies. Ten plus eight equal eighteen. But there 
are twenty-four hours in every day. Twenty-four 
hours minus eighteen hours equals six hours. What 
do you do with those six hours? 

Reckoning three hundred and thirteen working 
days to a year, and eight hours to a day, he who loses 
twenty minutes daily loses thirteen days in a year. 
He who squanders thirty minutes daily loses nineteen 
days, four and one-half hours every year, while the 
man who fritters away an hour a day wastes thirty- 
nine days a year. That is one year in every eight. 
Think of the self-improvement that could be gained 
in that time. Suppose that you set aside an hour and 
a half three days a week for serious study—that will 
give you two hundred and seventy minutes for mental 
calisthenics every week. 

How can a habit of reading to profit be formed? 
The best rule laid down for this that I have seen is 


40 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


the one given by the eminent English historian, 
Macaulay. He says: “When a boy I began to read 
earnestly, but at the foot of every page I stopped and 
obliged myself to give an account of what I had just 
read. At first I had to read it three or four times be¬ 
fore I got my mind firmly fixed. But I compelled my¬ 
self to comply with the plan, until now, after I have 
read a book through once, I can almost recite it from 
beginning to end." I most heartily indorse this plan. 
I would urge in addition that when you have finished a 
book, before putting it away, you formulate the 
thought of the book in exact language of your own. 

But you must think as well as read. Reading fur¬ 
nishes you with the material of knowledge. Think¬ 
ing makes what you read your own. Meditation is 
to the mind what digestion is to the body. Unless 
the food be digested it might as well not be eaten. 
Unless there be mental digestion known as medita¬ 
tion we will derive no benefit from what we read. 
Therefore, I plead for careful, fatiguing reflection 
upon what you are reading. Think—think! By dint 
of will dictate to the brain its task, and secure from 
it obedience. Perseverance is the only secret of con¬ 
centration. 

What Books? 

In answer to the question: “What are the three best 
books you have read?” the girls of the first high school 
named 274 different books, and the boys in the first 
high school named 230 different books; the girls in 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


4i 


the second high school named 228 different books, and 
the boys named 190 different books; the girls in the 
third high school, 160 different books, and the boys in 
that school, 166 different books. 

Some of the students did not name any books at 
all, and some named only one or two. Of course 
most of them complied with the request of the ques¬ 
tionnaire and named three. 

In this question, as in all the others, they were not 
guided in any sense of the word by their teachers or 
anybody else. Their answers constitute an honest 
revelation of their own reading selections. 

The ten books receiving the highest number of votes 
by the 576 girls in the three high schools were as fol¬ 
lows: Shakespeare's works were named 77 times; 
Ivanhoe, 41; Oliver Twist, 41; Tale of Two Cities, 
37; Little Women, 34; Holy Bible, 31; Tom Sawyer, 
and Huckleberry Finn, 28; Silas Marner, 26; Lorna 
Doone, 24; Life of Lincoln, 23; David Copperficld, 
23. The remaining 1,343 votes covered a wide range 
of subjects. 

The ten books named most often by the 555 boys 
in the three high schools were as follows: Treasure 
Island was named 61 times; Shakespeare’s works, 60; 
Tom Sazvyer and Huckleberry Finn, 59; Ivanhoe, 52, 
Tale of Two Cities, 49; Holy Bible, 39; Three Muske¬ 
teers, 36; Life of Lincoln, 34; Count of Monte Cristo, 
28; Oliver Twist, 25. The remaining 1,222 votes were 
scattered over a range almost as great as that of the 
girls. 


42 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


The study of these selections is both interesting 
and informing. All in all, it represents a rather high 
grade of reading for young people. It will be noted 
that Shakespeare comes first with the girls and second 
with the boys. Treasure Island comes first with the 
boys and does not get mentioned among the first ten by 
the girls. Ivanlioe is second with the girls and fourth 
with the boys. The boys do not put Lorna Doone 
among their first ten, and the girls do not put The 
Three Musketeers among their first ten. The Holy 
Bible is given sixth place by both groups, but is named 
by a larger number of boys than girls. 

Other comparisons and studies will suggest them¬ 
selves to the students of this book. 

Recreation and Amusement 

We have seen already the place given to reading in 
answer to the question: “What is the Recreation or 
Amusement you like best, and why?” A further study 
of the answers to that question reveals that “Athletics” 
were chosen by 45 per cent of the Protestant girls, 12 
per cent of the Jewish girls, 34 per cent of the Roman 
Catholic girls, and 26 per cent of the “no-church” 
girls; or, of the 576 girls, 34 per cent preferred “ath¬ 
letics” over anything else. 

Dancing was given first place by 17 per cent of the 
Protestant girls, 21 per cent of the Jewish girls, 23 
per cent of the Roman Catholic girls, and 18 per cent 
of the “no-church” girls; or, of the total number, 19 
per cent named dancing. 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


43 


“Athletics” were chosen by 73 per cent of the Prot¬ 
estant boys, 65 per cent of the Jewish boys, 71 per 
cent of the Roman Catholic boys, 66 per cent of the 
“no-church” boys; or, by 70 per cent of the 555 boys 
in the three schools. 

Dancing was named by 3 per cent of the Protestant 
boys, 1 per cent of the Jewish boys, 3 per cent of the 
Roman Catholic boys, and 2 per cent of the “no- 
church” boys; or, by only 3 per cent of the total num¬ 
ber. 

Music got 7 per cent of the total number of girls 
and 5 per cent of the total number of boys. The 
“movies” got 5 per cent of the total number of girls 
and 2 per cent of the total number of boys. Fourteen 
per cent of the girls and 13 per cent of the boys named 
other favorite recreations or amusements, such as 
canoeing, automobiling, radio “listening in,” and so 
forth. 

The Use of Spare Time 

We have already noted than an overwhelming ma¬ 
jority of both girls and boys named reading in an¬ 
swer to the question: “What do you do with your 
spare time?” Other things that were named got the 
total vote of the girls as follows: Music, 8 per cent; 
sewing, 7 per cent; “athletics,” 4 per cent; loafing, 2 
per cent; dancing, 2 per cent; “movies,” 1 per cent; 
and all other choices 22 per cent. 

In addition to reading (which got 36 per cent of the 
boys), the boys indicated other preferences as follows: 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


44 

Work, 22 per cent; “athletics,’’ 14 per cent; music, 4 
per cent; loafing, 2 per cent; and all other things, 22 
per cent. 

It will be noted that more girls named dancing than 
boys. In the answers to the questionnaires submitted 
to the students of the Institute of Technology about 
half of the girls named dancing, while an insig¬ 
nificantly small percentage of the boys named dancing. 
There was an increasing amount of sundry recrea¬ 
tions and amusements named by the Tech students, 
such as hiking, canoeing, automobiling, sailing, camp¬ 
ing, and kindred sports. 

One of the most dynamic and constructive volumes 
which we have read for a long time is Dr. Charles A. 
Ellwood’s The Reconstruction of Religion. In that 
book Dr. Ellwood has a chapter on “Religion and So¬ 
cial Pleasure:” Speaking out of rich and ripe wis¬ 
dom, this great Professor makes it plain that “What¬ 
ever in social pleasures and amusements weakens the 
family, corrupts morals, sneers at religion, hinders 
education, or tends toward the defiance of law or the 
creation of race and national prejudice, delays the 
realization of a Christian social order, and should re¬ 
ceive the fearless condemnation of social religion.” 1 

The civilized nature of man is acquired and can be 
maintained only by vigilance. Unless we are con¬ 
stantly on guard with respect to our use of leisure 
time we will be cursed with a recrudescence of pagan- 

1 Ellwood, The Reconstruction of Religion, p. 264. The 
Macmillan Company, New York. 



YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


45 


ism. Therefore it is well for us to heed the prin¬ 
ciples enunciated by Dr. Ell wood to guide us in our 
recreations and amusements. In order for a pleasure 
to be Christian it must be (i) re-creative. The ety¬ 
mology of “recreation” makes it plain that it must rest, 
restore and re-create the worn and wasted tissues of 
body and of mind. (2) It must be unselfish. What¬ 
ever else it may be called, any recreation or amuse¬ 
ment that is injurious to another, that wraps one in 
the cloak of self-interest is un-Christian. (3) It must 
be educational. In the Christian sense of the word, 
play has direct educational value, moral and religious 
as well as physical and mental. (4) It must be spir¬ 
itual. Any recreation or amusement which appeals 
only to the physical self is animalistic. The influ¬ 
ence of social pleasure upon character is inevitable, 
either for good or evil. If it be Christian, it will be 
one of the shaping and molding forces of the indi¬ 
vidual in Christ Jesus. 

The diversions of adults are too often carried on 
without any considerations except those of emotional 
gratification. The only restraint some people know 
in play life is the restraint enforced by environment, 
habit, and money limitations. 

Not work, but the things we do when we are not 
at work, oftenest cause disorders of mind and nerves. 
The increasing adoption of the shorter workday makes 
available a larger amount of time for recreation; 
which is only another way of saying that it creates a 
greater peril for our population unless the church is 


46 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


able to breathe into the whole recreational life the 
spirit of unselfishness and restraint. 

Edward Earl Purinton, Director of the “Independ¬ 
ent Efficiency Service,” after setting forth that the 
efficient man plays in order to work more and work 
better, says: 

“Our idea of amusement should be to enjoy it while 
we play, but employ it after we play. 

“A scientific recreation should include: 

“i. Complete break in routine activities and obliga¬ 
tions, with specific rest for overworked organs, nerves, 
brain-cells, and muscles. 

“2. Exercise for unused faculties and functions, to 
the point of wholesome fatigue of a kind seldom 
known. 

“3. An element of surprise, mental, emotional or 
spiritual, to reawaken interest in everyday life. 

“4. Absolute freedom, inner and outer, during the 
recreation period. 

“5. Temperamental uplift and renewal.” 

The best recreation, of course, is such outdoor sports 
as hiking, volley ball, baseball, soccer, tennis, swim¬ 
ming, short runs, skating, football—all of which ought 
to be encouraged by the church under the wholesome 
direction which it can give. 

Not only should the church seek to empty the dance 
halls and the pool rooms and other places of com¬ 
mercialized public amusement, but it will aim to pro- 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


47 


vide in the neglected quarters supervised playgrounds 
and parks, amusements, manual-labor classes and boys’ 
clubs. There are certain industrial communities where 
juvenile crime and delinquency have been reduced 
ninety-six per cent in one single year by the Prot¬ 
estant churches throwing themselves into such a pro¬ 
gram as I have here indicated. 

Youth's Ideal 

An ideal is a pattern idea. Whenever you can dis¬ 
cover the ideal which a young person has set up over 
the mantelpiece of his imagination you can pretty 
nearly determine what kind of a young man or woman 
that youth is likely to make. One of the questions 
which I submitted to these students was: “What man 
or woman in history or life comes nearest your ideal, 
and why?” The answer is striking. Abraham Lin¬ 
coln was named by 27 per cent of the girls, and by 32 
per cent of the boys. Of the different groups the high¬ 
est vote was given by both the Protestant girls and 
boys—in the case of the girls, 31 per cent; and in the 
case of the boys, 34 per cent. 

The second largest vote given by the girls was for 
George Washington, 7 per cent of the total. The 
second largest vote by the boys was given for Theo¬ 
dore Roosevelt, 11 per cent. Joan of Arc and Flor¬ 
ence Nightingale tied for third place in the estimation 
of the girls, each one getting 5 per cent. George 
Washington got third place with the boys, 7 per cent. 
“Mother” got 4 per cent of the girls, and “Father” 


48 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


got i per cent; and each one got 2 per cent of the 
boys. Others receiving votes, but in smaller percen¬ 
tages, were Woodrow Wilson, Clara Barton, certain 
ministers, Jane Addams, and so on. 

A more serious question is why father and mother 
do not constitute the ideal of more of their children. 

The reason given by nearly all of them for naming 
Abraham Lincoln was because he was upright, honest, 
fair, just, self-sacrificing, and so on. Lincoln is the 
everlasting illustration of the American doctrine of the 
essential equality of individual rights, and of the 
opportunity that is open to every American youth how¬ 
soever humble his origin, and howsoever unfavorable 
his environment, to aspire unto the highest places 
of service and influence. Great, noble, self-sacrificing 
man, he is enshrined in the hearts of the youth of 
America to-day. 

Temptations In the Schools 

“What are the special temptations of students in 
your school ?” was another of the questions asked of 
the students. Twenty-four per cent of the girls 
named truancy or “hooky,” the disposition to absent 
themselves from school or to “cut” classes; and 22 
per cent of the boys named the same temptation. Some 
form of dishonesty, such as cheating in an examina¬ 
tion or bluffing in recitations or lying about their work, 
was named by 35 per cent of the girls, and by 25 per 
cent of the boys. Thus dishonesty, in one form or 
another, is pointed out by 59 per cent of the girls and 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


49 

by 47 P er cen t °'f the boys. This does not necessarily 
mean that these young people are themselves dishonest. 
It simply means that they recognize the temptation 
to be dishonest. The fact that they name it indicates 
that they have a conscience on the matter, and that 
they fight against the tendency. I think it bodes 
well for the future. 

Idleness or “talking too much” is named by n per 
cent of the girls and by io per cent of the boys. The 
use of tobacco is named by 2 per cent of the girls, 
and by 13 per cent of the boys. 

Another question which pertains to the same subject 
was this: “Is it wrong to cheat in an examination if 
the student can ‘get by’ with it?” Practically 100 per 
cent of all of the young men and young women in the 
high schools and in the Institute of Techology de¬ 
clared emphatically that it is wrong. 

Another question closely related is this: “Is there 
anything wrong in betting a little on athletic games?” 
In answer to this question, approximately 100 per 
cent of the high-school students declared it is wrong; 
but it is saddening to note that almost half of the 
young men and young women in the institutions of 
higher learning stated that they did not think it was 
wrong if it were not carried to excess, or if it did not 
lead to something worse, or some other qualification of 
the sort. This is disquieting, for gambling is a disease 
in the blood that leads to some form of moral bank¬ 
ruptcy. 


50 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


Use of Money, Revelation of Character 

Another' question that seems simple enough on the 
surface, but that is a self-revelation of character is 
this: “What would you do with $10,000 if you had 
it?” 

“Invest it,” said 26 per cent of the Protestant girls; 
32 per cent of the Jewish girls; 38 per cent of the 
Roman Catholic girls; 20 per cent of the “no-church” 
girls; or 28 per cent of the total. 

“Invest it,” said 47 per cent of the Protestant boys; 
48 per cent of the Jewish boys; 47 per cent of the Ro¬ 
man Catholic boys; 38 per cent of the “no-church” 
boys; or 45 per cent of all the boys. 

“Spend it on self” (for either a selfish or worthy 
purpose), answered the girls as follows: Protestant, 
31 per cent; Jewish, 17 per cent; Roman Catholic, 30 
per cent; “no-church,” 21 per cent; or of the total, 27 
per cent. 

“Spend it for self,” answered the boys as follows: 
Protestant, 28 per cent; Jewish, 23 per cent; Roman 
Catholic, 33 per cent; “no-church,” 28 per cent; of the 
total, 28 per cent. 

“Help others with it,” in some unselfish way, 
answered the girls as follows: Protestants, 15 per 
cent; Jewish, 30 per cent; Roman Catholic, 16 per 
cent; “no-church,” 25 per cent; of the total, 19 per 
cent. 

“Help others,” answered the boys as follows: Prot¬ 
estant, 3 per cent; Jewish, 13 per cent; Roman Cath- 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 51 

olic, 7 per cent; "no-church,” 9 per cent; of the total, 
5 per cent. 

Thirteen per cent of the total number of girls and 
7 per cent of the total number of boys thought that 
they would spend some and save some; while 13 per 
cent of the girls and 15 per cent of the boys did not 
know what they would do with it. 

I am perfectly willing to admit that money can pur¬ 
chase many things which, from this life’s point of 
view, are most desirable. I have no use for that com¬ 
mon cant that glibly talks about the curse of riches and 
the blessing of poverty. Food and rare delicacies, 
clothes and jewelry, houses and automobiles, volumes 
of wisdom and gems of pictorial art, matchless music 
and the advantages of travel, are all at the disposal 
of those who have money to spend for these things. 

But some spend money for those things that are 
positively sinful. Pleasure that is immoral, pleasure 
that is selfish, pleasure that has no thought of God in 
it—such pleasures are empty and meaningless. Tal- 
mage quotes physicians as saying that "in some skin 
diseases the rioting of certain parasites gives preposter¬ 
ous thrillings of fleshly gratification, and the sufferer 
screams with hollow laughter occasioned by the writh- 
ings of these obscene parasites on the nerves.” The 
laughter of fools, the song of the drunkard, and the 
mirth of wickedness in general are also expressions of 
similar morbidity and disease; they are far removed 
from the sweet, sane gladness of those whose hearts 
are pure and whose hands are clean. 


52 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


Is it not right to save? Certainly, it is. Thrift is 
an old-fashioned virtue to which our generation needs 
to return. It is right and good for one to own his own 
home, and to develop and keep it. It is the height of 
selfishness to ape the rich. No wise young man will 
try to satisfy an automobile appetite on a wheelbarrow 
income. It is absurd to discount to-morrow’s inde¬ 
pendence for to-day’s good time. Saving is a good 
habit to form. A savings account is a battery where 
month by month something may be stored up for use 
in that day when your producing mechanism is worn 
beyond repair. 

But let us not deceive ourselves: thrift is not the 
hoarding of money but the intelligent saving and in¬ 
vesting of it, not for selfish purposes but to have it 
for use when some of the unlooked-for contingencies 
of life arrive. 

Forget not the word of the wisest of men: “There 
is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth 
to poverty.” As soon as the savings bank becomes 
your temple of worship, and the rustle of interest- 
bearing paper becomes music to your soul, then you are 
in a perilous place. For selfishness is suicidal; selfish¬ 
ness wraps itself in a shroud of gloom; selfishness 
throws poison into every stream of life; selfishness 
grinds the world smaller and smaller every day, de¬ 
grades man, and dishonors life; selfishness with its 
hooked, crooked, grasping hands strikes the good 
and merciful God in the face. And selfishness is most 
intensely selfish when it assumes the name of prudence. 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


53 

The man who says that justice will not allow him to 
be generous is a thief in his heart. 

We may get a hint of what we are to give by noting 
what the wise men of old gave to Christ: gold, frank¬ 
incense, and myrrh. Gold stands for all the golden 
things in your life: your joy, happiness, success, pros¬ 
perity, and money. Frankincense stands for your 
ideals, your loves, your aspirations, your worship— 
the constant worship of an adoring heart. Myrrh 
stands for your sorrows; and for your love, full and 
complete; and for death, the daily crucifying of the 
self-life. The gold of this world may be transmuted 
into heavenly securities if it is gained and spent for 
the service of men in the spirit of Christ. The love 
and sympathy which minister to the poor and needy 
and distressed become gold which is placed in the 
Bank of Heaven to our account. “The Lord loveth 
a cheerful giver.” He will take two mites, the cup of 
cold water, the box of ointment, if given gladly; but 
when any grudge, dudgeon, rancor, and resentment 
accompany the offerings it is not received by him. 

Woman's Place 

Two questions seek to find out the attitude of the 
youth in our high schools toward the place of woman. 
One question is: “Is woman's place in the home or in 
business and the professions?” The other question is: 
“Should young women enter men's fields of workr” 

It is interesting to note that 48 per cent of all of 


54 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


the girls say that her place is either in business and 
the professions or the home, according to her desires 
and qualifications or other circumstances or condi¬ 
tions. Twenty-six per cent of the boys admit that her 
place is either in the home or the professions and 
business. 

Less than half of the girls think that her place is 
in the home only—47 per cent of them. Considerably 
more than half of the boys think her place is in the 
home only—69 per cent of them. 

Three per cent of the girls say that her place is 
solely in business and the professions; but only 1 per 
cent of the boys say so. 

A detailed study reveals the fact that the highest 
vote among the girls in favor of the home only is by 
the Jewish, 52 per cent, and the highest vote among 
the boys for the home only is also the Jewish, 77 per 
cent. The lowest vote for the home only among the 
girls is “no-church,” 38 per cent; and it is the “no¬ 
church" boys that cast the lowest vote in favor of the 
home only, 58 per cent. 

In answer to the second question, as to whether 
women should enter men’s fields of work, the vote 
stands just about the same as in the preceding ques¬ 
tion, namely, most of the girls can see no reason why 
she should not, if she is fitted to and wants to, while a 
majority of the boys think she should not. 

A still further question that bears upon youth’s idea 
of the family is as follows: “How big do you think 
the ideal American family should be?” Most of them 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


55 

name the father and mother and three or four chil¬ 
dren. 

In answer to the question as to whether the youth 
would marry for money, position, or love, the vote 
was overwhelmingly in favor of love, although a few 
indicated that they would be perfectly willing to have 
the other two along with it. 

The Finest Achievement 

The modern student of human nature knows that 
if the child is father of the man, in a very much truer 
sense the achievement which the young man or woman 
in school looks upon as his or her finest furnishes an 
index to what the youth when grown to maturity will 
joy most in accomplishing. Hence the interest attach¬ 
ing to the answers of such a question as “What do you 
consider your finest achievement ?” 

In answer to that question, first place among the 
girls was given to some form of industry or art, such 
as sewing, painting, music, and so forth, as follows: 
Protestant, 32 per cent; Jewish, 21 per cent; Roman 
Catholic, 19 per cent; “no-church,” 18 per cent; or of 
the total number, 25 per cent. 

First place among the boys was given to school 
work, as follows: Protestant, 16 per cent; Jewish, 26 
per cent; Roman Catholic, 20 per cent; “no-church,” 
15 per cent; of the total number, 18 per cent. 

Second place among the girls was given to school 
work, a total of 12 per cent of the whole; and second 
place among the boys was given to industry or art, 13 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


56 

per cent of the whole. Thus it will be noted that first 
and second places were exactly reversed by the boys 
and girls. 

Third place by the girls was given to some form of 
unselfish service as follows: Protestant, 6 per cent; 
Jewish, 16 per cent; Roman Catholic, 7 per cent; “no- 
church,” 8 per cent; of the total, 9 per cent. While 
this is the third place in the total, it is made so by the 
unusually high vote given it by the Jewish girls. 

Third place by the boys is given to some form of 
honor or recognition as follows: Protestant, 5 per 
cent; Jewish, 5 per cent; Roman Catholic, 9 per cent; 
“no-church,” 13 per cent; or 7 per cent of the whole. 

Seven per cent of all of the girls looked upon some 
honor or recognition as their finest achievement. 

Six per cent of all of the boys indicated some form 
of unselfish service as their finest achievement. 

Some public performance was chosen by 2 per cent 
of the girls, and by 4 per cent of the boys. 

Some character achievement such as the control of 
the temper, the overcoming of laziness, the conquer¬ 
ing of a vicious habit, was named by 5 per cent of the 
girls, and by 5 per cent of the boys. 

Forty per cent of the girls and 47 per cent of the 
boys named various other things. 

In the light of these questions and their answers, 
the questions evolved by a University of Chicago pro¬ 
fessor seemed to be pertinent. He says that the truly 
educated person can answer “yes” to all of the follow¬ 
ing questions: 


YOUTH AND EDUCATION 


57 

“Has education given you sympathy with all the 
good causes and made you espouse them? 

“Has it made you public-spirited? 

“Has it made you a brother to the weak? 

“Have you learned how to make friends and keep 
them? 

“Do you know what it is to be a friend yourself? 

“Can you look an honest man or pure woman in the 
eye? 

“Do you see anything to love in a little child ? 

“Will a lonely dog follow you in the street? 

“Can you be high-minded and happy in the meanest 
drudgeries of life? 

“Do you think that washing dishes and hoeing corn 
is just as compatible with high thinking as piano play¬ 
ing or golf? 

“Are you good for anything yourself? 

“Can you be happy alone? 

“Can you look out on the world and see anything 
but dollars and cents? 

“Can you look into a mud-puddle by the wayside and 
see a clear sky? 

“Can you see anything in the puddle but mud?” 


y 


CHAPTER III 

YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 

A youth’s treatment of his body will be determined 
by his attitude toward the body. 

Worship of Physical Efficiency 

The ancient Greeks worshiped physical beauty. 
Their beautiful women were as famous among them 
as their great men. They chiseled out of the unyield¬ 
ing marble statues of the human body that have been 
the wonder and the despair of sculptors ever since. 
The dominating faith of their artists was faith in 
beauty, faith in the mere expression of the artistic im¬ 
pulse as the supreme and satisfying goal of life. The 
ancient Greeks also worshiped physical strength. That 
is why athletics had such a large place in their na¬ 
tional festivals. Chronology was based upon their 
Olympian games: the years were measured by Olym¬ 
piads. The winner of a game was supposed to reflect 
a certain glory upon his city. He was borne home at 
the head of a triumphal procession. Statues were 
erected to him, and his name was immortalized in 
poetry and song. 

Now, if we are absolutely honest with ourselves, we 
must admit that this pagan worship of the body is not 

58 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 59 

entirely wanting among us to-day. If it were not for 
the worship of physical beauty why would the papers 
every once in awhile print the picture of some woman, 
with the legend that she is one of the greatest beauties 
in the country? And why would the theaters advertise 
the appearance of a beautiful woman as a special 
reason for public patronage? If it were not for the 
worship of physical strength why would the brutaliz¬ 
ing practice of prize fights be permitted at all in this 
day? And how otherwise could you account for the 
fact that a man who becomes proficient in playing a 
game purely for recreation and amusement, for in¬ 
stance, baseball, is bought up by some syndicate or 
company whose chief concern is not good sport but big 
dividends ? 


The Sensualist and Glutton 

A second attitude toward the body, held by certain 
ancient and modern pagans, is that of indulgence. 
Read Quo Vadis if you would have a graphic por¬ 
trayal of certain customs among the Romans in the 
time of Nero, men who indulged the flesh to the full. 
So to-day we have the gourmand, the voluptuary, the 
sensualist, the epicure who says, “Eat, drink, and be 
merry, for to-morrow we die.” The body will perish 
like the animal. The body is nothing sacred. It is 
composed of only eighteen elements of the sixty-two 
primary elements known in nature. The average hu¬ 
man body is not worth more than ten or fifteen dollars 
—enough iron to make a twenty-penny nail, enough 


6 o 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


salt to fill a table salt-cellar, enough sugar to fill a 
small sugar-bowl, enough lime to whitewash a chicken 
coop, enough phosphorus to make a dozen matches, 
enough magnesia for one dose, enough albuminoids to 
replace the whites of a hundred eggs, enough fat to 
fill a ten-pound pot. The body is cheap. Therefore 
let the flesh have its fling. Follow desire. Indulge the 
body. Abuse the body. Damn the body. What odds ? 
“For to-morrow we die.” So argue the glutton and 
the sensualist. 

The Old Asceticism 

A third attitude toward the body may be described 
as the “false Christian” attitude. This is held by those 
who esteem the body as the very sphere and dwelling 
place of the devil, the implacable foe of spiritual de¬ 
velopment. Therefore, they neglect and bruise the 
body, deprive it of attention, treat it with disdain and 
contempt. In the early days of Christianity this idea 
gave rise to the most rigid asceticism. Those who 
strove to be especially saintly hated the body, and in¬ 
jured it. Thus, in the history of the monastic system, 
we are told of the man who buried himself up to the 
neck in the burning sands of the desert; of one who 
spent fifty years in a mountain cave; of one who lived 
for ten years doubled up in the hoop of a cart wheel; 
of one who stood for thirty years on the top of a col¬ 
umn, and when he was so weak that he could no longer 
stand, had himself tied to a stake; of those who so 
bound themselves that they had to jump about on one 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 61 


leg. In the later days of monasticism they slept on 
beds of thorns, wore belts with spikes in them, wore 
the roughest hair shirts next to the skin, scourged 
themselves, practiced long and rigorous fasts; were 
filthy, unclean, and unkempt. . 

The Christian Conception 

The fourth attitude toward the body that I name is 
the attitude of Jesus Christ, who, through his own 
body, accomplished the great facts of our redemption. 
Nothing else that can be said about the human body, or 
done for it, can possibly cast the same honor upon it as 
does the fact that through a body were accomplished 
the incarnation, death and resurrection by which we 
are saved. Jesus Christ possessed the highest spirit* 
ual attributes of any who have ever trod this earth. 
He invariably diagnosed the conditions of both body 
and soul, and, as a rule, corrected the bodily before he 
made his appeal to the spiritual. Such words as the 
parable of the good Samaritan, and such works as the 
healing of the sick, the restoring of the withered arm, 
and the feeding of the multitude show fully the esteem 
in which he held the body. 

There is no escape from this, then, that the attitude 
of Christ once and for all fixes the true Christian at¬ 
titude. God is not glorified by injuring and starving 
the body. Sickliness is not saintliness. Life for us is 
life in the body. Both mental and spiritual efficiency 
are raised or lowered by our physical condition. In 


62 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


the interest of our spiritual life our soul is clothed in 
the body. The body is on the sky-line between the two 
worlds where matter and spirit exquisitely blend: from 
the body the material slopes downward to inert elec¬ 
trons ; from the body the spiritual slopes upward to the 
very throne of God. 

Relation to Spiritual Efficiency 

It is therefore impossible to talk intelligently about 
spiritual efficiency without first considering physical 
efficiency, for the body is designed to be the medium 
of expression of the soul, the vehicle of spiritual facul¬ 
ties, and the efficient agent of the purposes of God. It 
is the only method and condition on earth of spiritual 
personality. Thus the body readily becomes the avenue 
for many temptations. But by control of the physical 
self we shape our moral character and acquire moral 
power. The body is not to be indulged. It should be 
infinitely more than simply the instrument for making 
money, or the patient servitor of sensual pleasure. If 
it usurps the place of the soul, and gains the whip hand, 
the whole life is turned upside down, and you are de¬ 
graded. Therefore, with Browning I urge: 

“Let us not always say, 

‘Spite of this flesh to-day, 

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole’: 

As the bird wings and sings, 

Let us cry, ‘All good things 

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps 
soul/ ” 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 63 


Relation to Mental Efficiency 

In the interest of our intelligence also has our mind 
been clothed in a sensitive body. The mind receives its 
knowledge through the body, and through the body 
acts upon the outer world. That part of the body 
which we call the brain is “an organ upon whose deli¬ 
cately carved keys of gray the immortal spirit plays 
life’s music,” and thus thought, aspiration, worship 
express themselves and become potent, and even com¬ 
municate themselves to others. But the body not only 
interprets: we must admit that it also influences and 
modifies the higher nature. And, therefore, it is im¬ 
possible to talk intelligently about the highest mental 
efficiency without first considering physical efficiency. 
Thus Dr. W. S. Hall says: “Paradoxical as it may 
seem, the world has come to recognize that the mind 
must have a perfect body as an instrument if it is to 
acquire and maintain perfect efficiency. On the other 
hand, the body must have a perfect and well-balanced 
mind to control it, if it is to acquire and maintain per¬ 
fect efficiency.” A sound mind in a sound body is 
essential to continued usefulness in any occupation. 

Achievement in Spite of Frailty 

I would have no delicate man discouraged. There is 
a wide distinction between an unsound body and a 
merely delicate body. History tells us of many men 
who, though weak, held on, persevered, endured until 
they achieved a royal work. Macaulay tells us that 
the armies of England were led by an “asthmatical 


64 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


skeleton,” and the hosts of France were marshaled by 
a hunch-back dwarf. Bacon, physically a frail man, 
was an intellectual giant. Among philosophers, 
Spinoza was unique as an original thinker; but all his 
life he was dying of consumption. Robert Louis 
Stevenson, that charming, helpful writer; J. A. 
Symonds, than whom there is no greater authority on 
the Italian revival of letters; and J. R. Green, that 
very popular historian of the English people, all 
wrought their noble work and won their immortal re¬ 
nown with a suffering body. And Paul, who gave to 
the Greek and Roman world an organized and estab¬ 
lished church, and to the infant church a systematic 
theology, was all his public life physically weak. Let 
us not forget that these men achieved their success not 
because of physical weakness but in spite of it. 

But if you are physically weak, it is all the more 
reason why you should carefully conserve the health 
you have, and train your body to the highest possible 
efficiency. It is a matter of common knowledge that 
when Theodore Roosevelt was graduated from college 
he was weak and ailing; but with the spirit of a man 
who could not be defeated he went to the West and 
lived on a ranch until he acquired a physique so vigor¬ 
ous and rugged that he has walked with the tread of 
a conqueror into history and immortal renown. 

Importance of Keeping Fit 

Let us not despise the blessing of good health. 
Neither genius, wealth, nor honor is equal to it. Charles 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 65 

Kingsley once said: “There has always seemed to me 
something impious in the neglect of personal health. 
I could not do half the good I do, if it were not for 
the strength and activity some consider coarse and 
degrading.” In a certain part of the ceremony of the 
Camp Fire Girls, after the lighting of a candle, this 
wholesome sentiment is expressed: “We hold on to 
health, because through health we serve and are happy. 
In caring for the health and beauty of our persons we 
are caring for the very shrine of the Great Spirit.” 
And Newell Dwight Hillis has this convincing sen¬ 
tence : “Given large physical organs, lungs with ca¬ 
pacity sufficient to oxygenate the life-currents as they 
pass upward; large arteries through which the blood 
may have full course, run, and be glorified, a brain 
healthy and balanced with a compact nervous system, 
and you have the basis for computing what will be a 
man’s value to society.” 1 

Doubly Important to Youth 

A question of supreme importance to all of us is 
this: How can we train and improve the body so as to 
attain unto the highest physical efficiency? If this is 
important for all, it is doubly important for adoles¬ 
cents; that is, for boys fourteen to twency-five years of 
age, and girls twelve to twenty-one or twenty-two years 
of age. It is of extreme importance to youth because of 
the mental and physical changes they undergo. They 

^Hillis: A Man's Value to Society, p. 18, The Fleming H. 
Revell Company, New York. 



66 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


experience a new birth: the higher human traits are 
now born within them. A new world bursts upon youth 
which youth itself does not understand. The passage 
from the nonsexual to the sexual life produces pro¬ 
found and wondrous changes. The outburst of physi¬ 
cal growth is more of a miracle than the recurring of 
spring, and the acquisition of new mental abilities 
makes us unacquainted with the boy or girl we had 
known but a few years before. 

It is more important than a young person can realize 
that during this period of marked increase in rate of 
growth, there should be a correlation in weight, height, 
and lung capacity; that there should be a symmetrical 
development in bones and muscles; that the develop¬ 
ment of the nervous system and the muscular system 
should go hand in hand. 

Get the Right Viewpoint 

It is important that young people should get the 
right point of view concerning the body. Man has a 
body; but man is a mind. The old asceticism sought 
to “bring the body under” because it was looked upon 
as a burden and the flesh was supposed to be in league 
with the devil. The new asceticism also looks upon the 
body as a burden, which requires a great deal of atten¬ 
tion. A man fifty years of age has probably spent 
twenty years of his life in bed, resting the body; he 
has probably spent ten years eating, feeding the body; 
he has probably spent five years dressing and un¬ 
dressing, clothing the body. It takes a great deal of 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 67 

time to brush teeth, bathe, shave, comb hair, and exer¬ 
cise, and do all of the hundred and one things which the 
body demands of us. But while the body is a burden, 
it is also a servant. It makes a good servant, but an aw¬ 
fully bad master. Being a good servant of the mind, the 
body needs treatment, but it should not be pampered. 

The Abundant Life 

Fitness for life's tasks demands muscular strength, 
endurance, energy, will-power, courage, and self-con¬ 
trol. Every person faces sooner or later the question 
whether quantity or quality shall mark the product of 
his life. In the lower spheres of activity quantity is 
the mark of success, but in the higher realms quality is 
the mark. In order to produce properly every person 
should live the kind of life that will reduce the periods 
of depression and of low activity, and will quicken and 
lengthen the luminous periods. The life worth while 
is not only one that accomplishes a certain piece of 
work but also one that enjoys friends, and that drinks 
the cup of life with zest; that has not only strength 
enough for the daily task but has also an exultant and 
exuberant vitality. 

Training Rules 

In the light of the foregoing, every sensible person 
will do those things that make for physical efficiency, 
and will abstain from those things that mar physical 
efficiency. The main question, therefore, is this: 
What are the simplest and most necessary rules for an 


68 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


ambitious youth and, indeed, for a sensible person of 
any age to follow? 

i. Body and Mind. The mind profoundly affects 
the body. Merely thinking of how a dill pickle or a 
piece of chocolate fudge tastes will increase the flow 
of saliva. The person who starts out in the morning 
feeling glum and depressed and angry at everybody 
can actually change the state of his mind by changing 
the state of his body. If he will carry his head erect, 
his shoulders back, breathe deeply, force himself to 
smile, even though he does not feel like it, call out a 
cheery “Good morning” to every acquaintance he 
meets, with the emphasis on the “Good,” it won’t be 
long until he will be feeling a thousand times more 
cheerful than when he started out. On the other hand, 
no matter how radiant a person may be feeling, if he 
assumes a sour expression and an unkind voice and acts 
meanly toward every one he meets, it will not be long 
until his mind will have assumed the state of his body. 

This sympathetic relation between the physical pos¬ 
ture and the mental attitude cannot be overstressed 
when we are talking about the life that counts. 

It is just because there is a close connection between 
thought and emotion and the body that Christian Sci¬ 
ence, mental healing, and other superstitions have met 
with such wild success. One does not need to accept 
all of the absurdities contained in such fads to ac¬ 
knowledge the pieces of solid ground upon which 
they stand. There are two thoughts that ought to be 
stressed. 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 69 

The first is this: Don’t worry. Worry is often due 
to a defective will. The person who temporizes, com¬ 
promises, evades, is foreordained to worry. Some¬ 
times it is due to a sinister dread of life and its re¬ 
sponsibilities, and sometimes despair is due to a letting 
go of confidence in God’s eternal goodness. “Worry,” 
says Dr. Luther H. Gulick, “is nothing but a deluded, 
dribbling fear, long-drawn out; and its effects on the 
organism are of the same kind, only not so sudden.” 1 

The second thought in this connection is: Keep the 
correct posture. One can almost invariably tell whether 
a man has a weak or strong character by whether he 
has a weak or strong carriage. There is a very in¬ 
timate relation between the physical posture of a man 
and his self-respect. The man who has done some 
dirty trick, who has been dishonest, or deceitful, or 
tricky, or who has lost his self-respect, invariably 
slouches. On the other hand, the person who habitu¬ 
ally slouches does not have that measure of self-re¬ 
spect which he ought to have. Grow fat, flabby, 
clumsy, feeble, letting the shoulders sag, and the abdo¬ 
men become protuberant, and the chest compressed, 
and you cannot but lack in self-respect. But straighten 
up; use the muscles of the diaphragm; draw the abdo¬ 
men in to where it belongs; throw the chest out, 
straighten up the spine so that the back of the neck is 
against the collar; breathe deeply and look the world 
squarely in the face, and self-respect takes its rightful 
place on the throne of a man’s life. 

J Gulick: The Efficient Life . Doubleday Page & Co., New York. 



70 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


2. Fresh Air. The body has been likened unto a 
blacksmith’s forge, and the lungs are the bellows 
thereof. Plants that do not have sunlight and air will 
grow sickly and die. Sunlight and fresh air are just 
as important to the human being. Light is the best 
tonic. An adequate supply of air is an ever-present 
and recurrent need. Walking in the open air with the 
correct physical posture, breathing deeply, enriches and 
oxygenates the blood and throws off much poisonous 
matter that would enfeeble both body and mind. Day 
and night we should get as much fresh air as possible, 
having our offices and mills and factories and stores 
well-ventilated if we must work indoors, and having 
our windows open at night, no longer being in slavery 
to the superstition about night air being injurious. All 
the air we breathe is night air whether it be indoors or 
outdoors. The only difference is that the outdoor air 
contains the ingredients which the physical system de¬ 
mands, while the bedroom air which we have breathed 
over contains the death-dealing carbonic-acid gas or 
carbonic-oxide. The person who does not form the 
habit of breathing properly and getting an abundance 
of fresh air becomes the easy victim of influenza, 
grippe, bronchitis, pneumonia, and common cold, and 
is predisposed to other diseases. 

Our clothing should be both loose and absorbent so 
that the air may come in contact with our bodies, that 
we may breathe through the pores of the skin as well 
as through the nose, but never through the mouth. 

3. Food and Drink. If the body is a blacksmith’s 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 71 

forge, food is the fuel. The person who prizes success 
in life will learn something about food values. Cal¬ 
ories are the fuel units. The protein foods, fat and 
carbo-hydrates, coming mostly from the starch and 
sugar, are for fuel, for building tissues and repairing 
the body. Meat and eggs are high in protein. Medi¬ 
cal authority states that ten per cent of the total nutri¬ 
ment should be protein; but an excessive use of high 
protein foods overworks the kidneys and liver. 

Enough food should be eaten to maintain weight, 
endurance, and general feeling of well-being; but it is 
better to eat hard, bulky and uncooked foods, fibrous 
fruits and vegetables instead of so much concentrated 
and predigested food. 

We should eat slowly and thoroughly masticate what 
we eat. It would be well if everyone could make the 
dinner table a real social event, prolonging the eating 
process as long as possible. 

Good, fresh, pure water is the best drink ever known 
to man. The drinking of plenty of it will contribute 
to the general health of the drinker. 

4. The Elimination of Waste. If the human body is 
a blacksmith’s forge, the waste materials that ac¬ 
cumulate are the ashes and clinkers. Poison is pro¬ 
duced in the system as a by-product of life processes. 
Some of these poisons are destroyed by the liver if it 
functions properly, and others are eliminated by the 
kidneys, bowels, and skin. If this waste is not thrown 
off, it does precisely what ashes and clinkers do to the 
forge: they cause the fire to burn inefficiently until a 


72 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


certain amount have accumulated and then they put it 
out entirely. A lot of people are only fifty per cent 
efficient because their systems have not been rid of 
poisons from within. 

In order to get rid of waste materials one ought to 
require himself to establish regular habits. It is im¬ 
portant to keep in the right frame of mind. It is es¬ 
sential to take the proper amount of exercise and to 
breathe properly. It is well to eat the bulky foods 
that the bowels can get hold of. It is sensible to drink 
plenty of water and to avoid overfatigue. 

5. Avoid Poisons From Without. If it is important 
to get rid of poisons from within, it is no less impor¬ 
tant to keep from admitting poisons from without. 
It is really not necessary to warn people against taking 
things that bear the skull and crossbones, labeling them 
as poisons; for only a coward who is afraid to live, or 
a person whose mind is deranged, will purposely take 
poisons that are labeled as such. We are breathing in 
poisonous matters all the time, and we run against 
poisonous germs without seeing them. These are not 
the kinds of poisons that I have in mind, but, rather, 
that kind of poisons that people form the habit of 
taking, and do it with their eyes open. 

(1) Drugs. There are some drugs that deaden 
pain, and in order to get rid of a pain people will begin 
to take these drugs, and will keep on taking them until, 
objects of pity, they are held in the viselike grip of the 
drug habit. People should know that pain is a danger 
signal, and that the important thing is not to deaden 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 73 

the pain but to remove the cause, and that the drug 
never removes the cause. 

There are other drugs that act as a stimulant. In 
this day of keen competition, when a man wants his 
wits sharpened, when he wants to scourge his brain 
into just a little more work than he habitually gets out 
of it, he begins to apply the whip in the form of drugs 
and stimulants of various kinds. The man should 
know that the whip applied to a horse may cause it to 
spring forward, not giving it any new strength or en- 
ergy, but causing a sudden expenditure of the strength 
which the horse has, an expenditure that is drawn out 
of the bank of its body. Even so, the stimulant or 
drug does not supply any new energy. In so far as it 
is a whip at all and not a paralyzing force, it simply 
causes an expenditure of energy which is charged 
against the future efficiency of the user. 

(2) Alcohol. The nonuse of alcohol is now as 
much a matter of good citizenship as of medical ad¬ 
vice. If a youth is a loyal, patriotic American, the 
appeal can be made just as strongly to his civic sense 
as to his desire for physical efficiency. However, it 
ought to be said here that there is an ancient fallacy 
which dies hard. It is to the effect that alcohol stimu¬ 
lates both mind and body. Modern science shows that 
it does nothing of the sort. All it does is to paralyze 
the nerves that make us feel fatigue. It deceives the 
user. It breaks down the resistance to infectious dis¬ 
eases. It paralyzes the white blood-corpuscles. In a 
study of a comparative number of deaths in the United 


74 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


States a few years before national prohibition was 
adopted the statistics show that 152,781 deaths re¬ 
sulted from the use of alcohol. That same year the 
number who died from pneumonia, cancer, typhoid, 
diphtheria and croup, and smallpox totaled 151,419. 
That is, more people killed themselves by drinking al¬ 
coholic liquors than died of pneumonia, cancer, ty¬ 
phoid, diphtheria and croup, and smallpox combined. 

Not only does liquor-drinking kill people, but it im¬ 
pairs the health of those whom it does not kill. The 
Leipsic Sick Benefit Societies reported that in one year 
the average insured man between the ages of twenty- 
five and thirty-four was sick about seven and a half 
days in one year, but drinking men in the same class 
were sick nearly twenty days. Between the ages of 
thirty-five and forty-four years the average insured 
man was sick a little over ten days, and the drinkers of 
the same class were sick about twenty-seven days. 

Anything that kills some people and makes others 
sick is certainly injurious to the physical efficiency of 
the user, even if it should happen that it does not kill 
him or make him sick. 

Moreover, it has been plainly demonstrated by scien¬ 
tific experiment that the use of alcohol by parents tends 
to damage their offspring; that is, a drinking man im¬ 
pairs the physical efficiency of his child years before 
the child is born. 

The body of a drunkard usually becomes the grave 
of his dead manhood long before the body itself is 
carried to the cemetery. 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 75 

(3) Tobacco. Another poison which men take in 
from without is tobacco. 

The tobacco interests of this country were keenly 
alive to the furthering of their business interests dur¬ 
ing the World War. They were successful in creat¬ 
ing such sentiment that millions of boys began to 
smoke cigarettes who would not have thought of it 
before. They were so successful that many good 
women who would have been horror-struck to have 
found their sons yielding to the cigarette habit in the 
days before the war actually packed boxes with cigar¬ 
ettes in to send to the soldiers. Even ministers of the 
gospel “fell for” the propaganda of the tobacco trust. 
It reached such a stage that when some one who had 
not been swept off his feet dared to lift his voice in 
protest he was accused of being unpatriotic, and even 
of being pro-German. 

And then when the war was over if any one dared 
to say anything against the use of tobacco, the “Blue- 
Law” bogy was set up. We were told that now that 
the reformers had succeeded in depriving men of their 
“personal liberty” with regard to booze, the next 
move was to take away from them their tobacco. With 
such a come-back some otherwise good people did not 
express their honest convictions lest it would interfere 
with the proper establishment of the prohibition re¬ 
gime. 

There has now been a sufficient revival of sanity 
that one can tell the truth about tobacco without being 
misunderstood. I would not say for a single minute 


76 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


that every person who uses tobacco is bound straight 
for hell, and I would not think of saying that the use 
of tobacco is as bad as the use of alcoholic liquor; 
but I do say that it is not conducive to the highest ef¬ 
ficiency of the user. 

The ordinary smoker is unconscious of any injury 
which it does him, and will generally vehemently deny 
that it works him any injury at all. 

But no matter what the tobacco user thinks about 
it, the facts are against him. A few years ago at Yale, 
in a class of 147 students, it was found that in four 
years’ time the 77 who never used tobacco surpassed 
the 70 who did use it, gaining 10 per cent in weight, 
24 per cent in increase in height, and 27 per cent by 
actual measurement in chest growth. The same sort of 
study made at Amherst revealed that during the four 
years’ course the nonusers of tobacco gained 24 per 
cent more in weight, 37 per cent more in height, 42 
per cent more in chest growth, and 75 per cent more 
in increase in lung capacity than did the users of to¬ 
bacco. Professor Lombard, of the University of Mich¬ 
igan, finds that tobacco lessens the power of the vol¬ 
untary muscles, the reason being given that it de¬ 
presses the nervous system. 

I wrote a letter to Ohio State University’s great 
football coach, Dr. J. W. Wilce, asking him for his 
honest opinion as to the effects of the use of tobacco 
upon college athletes. His reply is as follows: 

Dear Rev. Marsh : 

I was in receipt of your inquiry of the 18th inst. 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 77 

The fact that the use of tobacco is absolutely forbidden to 
athletes in institutions where there are any athletic standards 
is definite proof that men in the practical field know that its 
use is detrimental to the best physical performance, even if 
they do not appreciate its definite physiological and patho¬ 
logical effects. 

The best collection of definite testimonials on the subject, 
in my estimation, is collected in a pamphlet issued by Henry 
Ford called The Little White Slaver. 

In my experience, tobacco used in any appreciable amount 
causes a rise in blood pressure with feeling of stimulation, 
then a depression, and then a fairly constant nervous irri¬ 
tability in case its above mentioned sedative influence is not 
constantly used. The rapid irritable tobacco heart is a 
definite example of its pathological effects. 

Books have been written, of course, on this subject, but I 
trust that these few facts will be of some slight immediate 
assistance. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) J. W. Wilce, M.D. 

I also made the same inquiry of the athletic director 
and football coach of the State University of Iowa, a 
man who has produced a team that has attracted na¬ 
tion-wide attention. Coach Jones’ reply is as follows: 

Dear Dr. Marsh: 

I am in receipt of your letter of January 18th in regard 
to our opinion on the effect of the use of tobacco upon the 
physical system. 

I have asked Dr. W. R. Fieseler, medical supervisor of 
Inter-Collegiate Athletics, to write a statement as to his 
opinion of the effect of tobacco upon physical efficiency and 
I am enclosing herewith, this statement. 

I might add that we do not permit smoking of any kind by 


78 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


candidates for our athletic teams, believing that it does affect 
the efficiency of the athlete. 

Yours very truly, 

(Signed) H. H. Jones. 


The statement which the medical supervisor of In¬ 
tercollegiate Athletics wrote, pursuant to Coach Jones’ 
request, is as follows: 

In reviewing the athletic records, as well as the medical 
and social histories, of the many boys who have been mem¬ 
bers of our athletic teams, I find that but a very few of the 
boys have not used tobacco in some form. Some of our best 
athletes have been fairly heavy smokers during the “off” 
seasons, while the other users of tobacco have been only 
moderate consumers of it. The boys are urged to refrain 
from using tobacco at all times, and are compelled to stop 
using it while in training. 

From our statistics, I would conclude that by the time a 
boy reaches college he has learned from experience or from 
his high-school coach that athletics and tobacco do not go 
together. 

In getting a man in condition to be able to withstand the 
strain college athletics impose upon him I would say that 
it takes one or two weeks longer for the smoker to get into 
shape than it does the nontobacco user. It must be borne in 
mind that a man can use tobacco and not feel any effects 
from it, such as the one who smokes only occasionally and 
who does not inhale. 

The most deleterious effect from the use of tobacco, in 
my opinion, occurs in men who inhale smoke, which in 
itself acts as an irritant to the membrane lining the respira¬ 
tory tract. Nature attempts to protect this delicate mem¬ 
brane by throwing out a mucous secretion which in itself 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 79 

lessens the area of lung tissue for the interchange of gases 
between the air in the lungs and the blood. 

By 

(Signed) Dr. W. R. Fieseler, 

Medical Supervisor of Intercollegiate 
Athletics, State University of Iowa. 

r 

Professor Fred J. Pack, of the University of Utah, 
has carefully gathered statistics of students competing 
for places on football teams in six educational institu¬ 
tions, and has just as carefully studied the scholastic 
standing of smokers and nonsrpokers in twelve institu¬ 
tions. His conclusions are as follows: 

“1. Only half as many smokers as nonsmokers are 
successful in the 'try-outs’ for football squads. 

"In the case of able-bodied men smoking is asso¬ 
ciated with loss of lung capacity amounting to prac¬ 
tically ten per cent. 

"3. Smoking is invariably associated with low schol¬ 
arship.” 

A college class at Yale was divided into four sec¬ 
tions according to scholarship. The lowest section was 
composed almost entirely of smokers, and the highest 
section was composed almost entirely of non-smokers. 

Harriman, the railroad king, once said, "I would 
just as soon think of getting my employees out of the 
insane asylum as to employ cigarette users.” 

Experimental evidence shows that tobacco in ani¬ 
mals produces arterial changes. It contains a powerful 
narcotic poison, nicotine, which resembles prussic acid 
in the rapidity of its action when a fatal dose is taken. 


8 o 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


It also contains small quantities of related substances, 
such as: nicollin, nicotein, and nicotianin. 

Doctors Fisher and Fisk, of the Life Extension In¬ 
stitute, tell us that: “On heating, pyridin (a substance 
often used to denature alcohol), picolin, collidin, and 
other bases are formed, as well as carbolic acid, am¬ 
monia, marsh gas, cyanogen, and hydrocyanic acid, 
carbon monoxide (coal gas) and furfural. Furfural 
is a constituent of fusel oil, which is so much dreaded 
in poor whisky. The smoke of a single cigarette may 
contain as much furfural as two ounces of whisky.” 1 

Some people insist that nicotine is not contained in 
the smoke. But scientific tests show that cigarette 
smoke has eighty-two per cent of the nicotine con¬ 
tained in the tobacco, and that a cigar has eighty-five 
to ninety-seven per cent of the nicotine contained in 
the tobacco. A Russian investigator by the name of 
Zhebrovski used an ingenious apparatus which com¬ 
pelled rabbits to smoke cigarette tobacco from six to 
eight hours daily. The result was that some died 
shortly and some seemed to acquire a certain tolerance 
for it, such as tobacco users have, but of those that lived 
a distinct hardening of the blood vessels was noted. 

The poisonous effects of the use of tobacco may be 
listed as “hardening of the arteries, disturbance of 
blood pressure, shortness of breath, palpitation of the 
heart, insomnia, irritant effect on the mucous mem- 

1 From How to Live. By special arrangement with Funk 
& Wagnalls Company, Publishers, New York. Copyright, 
1915, 1917, I 9 I 9 > an d l 9 22 by Funk & Wagnalls Company. 



YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 81 


branes of the eye, catarrhal conditions of the nose, 
throat, and ear.” One drop of nicotine on the un¬ 
broken skin of a rabbit, or on the tongue of a dog or 
a cat will produce death. 

In 1913 (the year before the World War started) 
there were used in the United States of America 
8 >73 2 >8 i 5703 cigars; 14,294,895,471 cigarettes; and 
404,362,620 pounds of chewing and smoking tobacco. 
In 1917 (the first year that America was in the World 
War) there were consumed by the Americans 9,216,- 
901,113 cigars; 30,529,193,568 cigarettes; and 445,- 
763,206 pounds of chewing and smoking tobacco. 
The cigarette output of the registered factories and 
bonded manufacturing warehouses in the United 
States in 1921 was approximately 60,000,000,000. 
Fewer than 9,000,000,000 were exported, thus leaving 
more than 51,000,000,000 for consumption in the 
United States. This number does not take into con¬ 
sideration those made by the smokers from loose to¬ 
bacco, of which no data are available. There were 
also made in 1921 in bonded manufacturing ware¬ 
houses 31,713,904 cigars, and 1,427,822 pounds of 
smoking, plug and twist tobacco. 

6 . Keep Clean. There is another thing which physi¬ 
cal efficiency demands, that is that we shall keep clean. 
The proper care of the teeth and gums that will pre¬ 
vent dental decay and pyorrhea is essential to the best 
life. The mouth should be kept aseptic, not only by a 
proper use of the brush, but also by a vigorous use of 
the jaws. 


82 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


It is also important that the body should be kept 
clean. The cold bath in the morning and the hot bath 
in the evening do more for us than merely keeping 
the pores of the skin open, so that the skin may per¬ 
form its proper function in throwing off waste ma¬ 
terials: the bath is good for the soul as well as the 
body. The benefit of the bath is as much psychological 
as it is physiological. We are separated from the outer 
world only by our skin. It gives us a feeling of clean¬ 
ness, and produces an enhancement of self-respect to 
bathe frequently. Bacon never spoke more truly than 
when he said: “Cleanness of body was ever deemed to 
proceed from a due reverence to God.” And John 
Wesley’s oft-quoted adage is germane here: “Cleanli¬ 
ness is indeed next to godliness.” 

7. Keep Clean Morally. If it is important to avoid 
germs, flies, and other vermin, and to keep the body 
cleansed of perspiration and dirt, it is a thousand times 
more important that the youth shall keep himself 
morally clean. 

The relation between the sexes is a topic on which 
our Lord spoke clearly and emphatically. He reverted 
to it again and again. But among us there is an in¬ 
delicate delicacy, both in our homes and in our churches, 
which has wrought horrible mischief by the silence 
which it has maintained. Many have been caught in 
the whirlpool of vice before they knew their danger. 
Others have acquired a certain knowledge, but they 
have acquired it from secret and corrupt sources. I 
believe that there is not a subject named in the Bible 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 83 

which cannot, with perfect propriety, be discussed in 
the home and from the pulpit, provided always that the 
purpose of such discussion is to undermine the citadel 
of sin, and to fortify health and morality and to ad¬ 
vance the standard of civilization. Charles Major in 
his popular novel, When Knighthood Was in Flower, 
says, “Prudery is no more a sign of virtue than a wig 
is of hair; it is usually put on to hide a bald place.” 
Let the youths of the land be taught that continence is 
the royal road to physical and mental prowess. Let 
our boys be taught that there is honor and responsi¬ 
bility in fatherhood; and let our little girls be taught 
the sacredness of motherhood. Let them all be taught 
that their bodies are the temples of God, and that they 
must not by secret or open practices defile these temples. 

There is one devil’s lie that our young men especially 
ought to learn, and that is that strict and absolute con¬ 
tinence is inconsistent with the highest physical and 
mental development and efficiency. To counteract that 
vicious lie, Dr. M. J. Exner publishes a statement 
signed by three hundred and sixty of the foremost 
medical authorities of the United States as follows: 

“In view of the individual and social dangers which 
spring from the widespread belief that continence may 
be detrimental to health, and of the fact that muni¬ 
cipal toleration of prostitution is sometimes defended 
on the ground that sexual indulgence is necessary, we, 
the undersigned, members of the medical profession, 
testify to our belief that continence has not been shown 
to be detrimental to health or virility; that there is no 


84 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


evidence of its being inconsistent with the highest 
physical, mental, and moral efficiency; and that it of¬ 
fers the only sure reliance for sexual health outside of 
marriage.” 1 

The young men who were in the army during the 
World War may remember the Manual of Military 
Training (Moss), Section 1466, page 522, which reads 
as follows: “Sexual intercourse is not necessary to pre¬ 
serve health and manly vigor. The natural sexual im¬ 
pulse can be kept under control by avoiding associa¬ 
tions, and thoughts of a lewd character.” 

But not only does the unchaste youth lower his ef¬ 
ficiency by his incontinence; every time that he breaks 
the moral law he exposes himself to the ravages of the 
most horrible, incapacitating, and incurable diseases 
known to man. It would be well for every young fel¬ 
low to learn once and for all that there are no pure 
prostitutes. All prostitutes are diseased. The girl 
or woman who clandestinely will yield herself to any 
man will yield herself to other men also. Even on 
the low plane of life and physical strength the only safe 
course is for a man to live as would any true Christian 
live. 

8. Rest a}id Sleep . Exercise and work produce the 
conditions for growth, but the greatest growth itself 
takes place in rest. Fatigue is a destructive agent, 
like sickness and death. Fatigue is intimately asso¬ 
ciated with the moral character. It is a fact that the 

J M. J. Exner, The Rational Sex Life for Men, p. 64. 
Association Press, New York. 



YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 85 


most recent acquisitions of character are the first to 
be lost—and these virtues are generally lost in a 
period of overfatigue. For instance, one of the last 
virtues to be acquired by the human species is patience. 
When we are very tired we are likely to be impatient. 
Also our powers of resistance to wrongdoing are often 
broken down when we are overly fatigued. Thus 
bodily vigor becomes a moral virtue. 

Work and play and rest and sleep is a daily rhythm 
worked out by nature, interference with which is ac¬ 
companied by a lessening of our physical fitness. 

Notwithstanding all of our modern psychological 
information and cocksureness, nobody knows exactly 
what sleep is; but we know 7 some of the things it 
does. The latest statement of psychology cannot im¬ 
prove on the description offered by Shakespeare: 

“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, 

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, 

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, 
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” 

There is no sense in a person’s lazying around in bed 
more than is necessary for the building up of the worn 
tissues of the body. I have a friend who is the ex¬ 
ecutive officer of a great department of one of the 
important denominations of this country. He has so 
complete control of his own sleep that he can say, “I 
think I will sleep for twelve minutes,” or “fifteen min¬ 
utes,” as the case may be, and he will stretch himself 
out on a couch, immediately fall into a deep sleep, and 
precisely on the minute that he had set for himself he 


86 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


will awaken refreshed in body and mind. We cannot 
all do that, but we can certainly learn the art of sleep¬ 
ing as much as is necessary and not wasting any more 
time pretending to sleep. 

Among the literature displayed at the World’s Ex¬ 
position in Paris, in 1892, was the argument of Doctor 
Haegler, of Basel, the world’s greatest specialist on the 
relation of the Sabbath to hygiene. He showed, fol¬ 
lowing experiments of Voit and Pollikofer, from ex¬ 
aminations of the corpuscles of the blood, that the 
night’s rest does not fully restore the day’s waste, but 
needs to be supplemented by the weekly rest, that a 
man does not take as full a breath when absorbed in 
work as when at rest. Scientists estimate that a man 
breathes from one to two cubic inches less at each 
breath when earnestly at work than if perfectly at rest. 
Estimating on the basis of one and one half inches per 
breath for eighteen breaths per minute, there will be 
a loss of 12,960 cubic inches in eight hours of work, as 
compared to the same length of rest. Meantime the 
worker is using more oxygen than he breathes, and 
drawing the excess out of the “bank of his own body.” 
In the case of a certain laborer, taken for example, the 
debt to nature thus made in one day’s work is one 
ounce. He sleeps, and breathes more oxygen than he 
uses, but gets back only five sixths of his lost ounce. 
At the end of the week he is an ounce short, a whole 
day behind, nature saying, “You need rest.” Cer¬ 
tainly, the laboring man’s tired body demands one day 
of rest in seven. 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 87 

9. Recreation. Recreation as I am using it in this 
chapter is to be interpreted as including all that we do 
in our leisure time, that is, things that engage our at¬ 
tention when we are neither working nor sleeping. 

Ancient Greece became famous because four fifths 
of her people were slaves, and thus the remaining one 
fifth had time to become famous. This one fifth of the 
population had time to lend immortality to ancient 
Greece. To-day, on account of the multiplication of 
labor-saving machinery and the shortening of the hours 
of labor, there is being secured time for all, a little 
time in each day to devote to the expression of our 
real selves. The occupations of any city are lopsided. 
So much time is spent in exercising only one part of 
our body or mind, or both, that we need leisure time 
in which to develop a full-orbed individual. Work is 
important; but if we would be individuals, standing 
out from the multitude, exercising the right of self- 
expression, our spirits must have a life of their own. 
It is the spirit that plays. Play is the pursuit of ideals. 

Labor unrelieved by recreation produces fatigue, and 
fatigue produces hate, lawlessness, and despair. Recre¬ 
ation undirected, unregulated, furtive, produces vice, 
degeneration, and helplessness. But we are learning 
now that play is the natural expression of all the in¬ 
born instincts. We are learning that we can more 
rapidly awaken the social conscience through recrea¬ 
tional periods either of the family, the community, or 
the church, than through work. We agree with that 
great social prophetess, Jane Addams, that “Organized 


88 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


games, under the direction of good trainers, develop 
respect for the rights of others, fairness, and self- 
control ; cement the school and the home, and counter¬ 
act the lawlessness and destructiveness which are the 
lesson of the vacant lot.” 

The failure to satisfy the play instinct has left the 
way open for commercialized amusement to establish 
itself for profit, and with little regard for the moral 
quality of the recreation offered. Therefore, the 
church, Epworth League and Sunday school deserve 
great credit for providing rest rooms, sports, games, 
gymnasiums, swimming, tennis courts, baseball dia¬ 
monds, summer camps, holiday programs, pageants, 
and every form of play that brings about the spirit of 
cooperation, of friendliness, of loyalty, and of democ¬ 
racy that is invaluable in the making of desirable cit¬ 
izens. 

The Temple of God 

We finish as we began: A youth’s treatment of his 
body will be determined by his attitude toward it. 
Everything will adjust itself if he gets clearly before 
him that the body is the temple of God. 

‘‘Glorify God in your body.” “Ye are not your 
own,” you belong to God, therefore “Glorify God in 
your body.” Before the “therefore” stands the cross 
with Jesus upon it. 

It is almost blasphemy against the God who dwells 
within to allow the body to beguile us into lust, anger, 
selfishness, or unkindness to others. 


YOUTH AND PHYSICAL EFFICIENCY 89 


The Christian idea is that the person who sins 
against his body degrades himself and transgresses 
against the indwelling God. 

Physical efficiency is not an end in itself; the end is 

the blessing of others through our lives and labors. 

» 

Wholesome was the advice which Woodrow Wilson 
gave to the youth of America when they fared forth 
in the World War, and just as wholesome for times of 
peace: “Let it be your pride therefore to show all men 
everywhere . . . what good men you are, keeping 
yourselves fit and straight in everything and pure and 
clean through and through.” 


CHAPTER IV 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 

To say that there are 105,710,620 people in the 
United States is to speak the truth as revealed in the 
1920 census, but it does not mean very much to any of 
us; for we have never seen so many people together 
at any one time, and it is impossible for us to visualize 
such a crowd. 

However, we have all seen a thousand people at one 
time. Many of our churches will seat a thousand peo¬ 
ple. Most of us have seen a regiment of soldiers 
marching along the street, and in that regiment there 
were, roughly speaking, a thousand men. Therefore, 
when we speak of a group of a thousand people we are 
able to visualize it. 

Now, if we should imagine the total population of 
the United States passing by in regiments of one thou¬ 
sand each, four fifths of those regiments would be 
made up of people ten years of age and over, and the 
other fifth would be of children under ten years of 
age. 

Just one half of the people ten years of age and over 
are engaged in gainful occupations; that is, they are 
working for pay. 

Let us now imagine that to-morrow morning we 

90 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


9i 


will stand on the steps of our church and the 41,614,- 
248 people in the United States, 33,064,737 men and 
8,549,5 11 women, who are engaged in gainful occupa¬ 
tions are marching past us on their way to work, in 
regiments of one thousand each, the men first and then 

r 

the women. Let us suppose, further, that each regi¬ 
ment has its exact quota of people engaged in the 
different occupations. That is, there would be exactly 
the same number of farmers in each regiment, exactly 
the same number of preachers in each regiment, and 
so on through all of the different classifications. 

Proportion of Men In Different Occupations 

As sometimes we have seen Labor-Day parades 
made up of a number of workers from different indus¬ 
tries, the marchers in each section carrying banners 
indicating the industry to which they belonged, so let 
us imagine that we now see a regiment of one thou¬ 
sand men marching by to work, each group carrying 
banners indicating their occupation. Thus we can see 
the proportionate number engaged in the different 
occupations. 

Here they come: Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! The 
smallest group is in the front. There are just 23 of 
them. The banners which they carry label them as 
“Public Service.” These are the policemen, the fire 
department, the soldiers and sailors, and the city, 
county, State and national officials. 

The second division consists of 33 men wearing 
upon their caps pit lamps and carrying a banner which 


92 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


tells us that they are engaged in the “Extraction of 
Minerals.” They are the oil, gas, and salt well opera¬ 
tives, and the coal, copper, gold, silver, iron, lead, and 
zinc mine operatives, as well as the relatively few 
operators, officials and managers of the mines. 

The next company is made up of 35 men who are de¬ 
voted to “Professional Service.” Here we find our 
clergymen, lawyers, musicians, teachers, physicians 
and surgeons, nurses, technical engineers, and others 
in professional life. 

The fourth division of this parade of one thousand 
male workers consists of 37 men whose occupation is 
described as “Domestic and Personal Service.” They 
are the barbers, the boarding- and lodging-house 
keepers, the launderers, servants, waiters, and kindred 
forms of domestic and personal service. 

The fifth part of this regiment consists of 51 men 
carrying ledgers and pencils and pens and note books, 
which set them off as engaged in “Clerical Occupa¬ 
tions.” 

The sixth group is composed of 86 men, the banner 
they carry indicating that they are engaged in “Trans¬ 
portation.” They have representation from the water 
transportation, road and street transportation, rail¬ 
road transportation, express, post, telegraph and tele¬ 
phone occupations, and all other forms of transporta¬ 
tion. 

The seventh section is still larger, having in it 108 
men devoted to “Trade.” Their work is in banks and 
stores and insurance offices and the whole selling game. 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


93 


The eighth division is very much larger, having in 
it 298 men. It is made up of those engaged in “Agri¬ 
culture, Forestry, and Animal Husbandry.” 

The last section of this regiment of one thousand 
men is the largest section of all, 329 in number, almost 
a third of the whole crowd. Their banner bears the 
words: “Manufacturing and Mechanical Industries.” 
Some of them are apprentices to building and hand 
trades. Others are bakers, blacksmiths, brick and 
stonemasons, builders and carpenters, laborers, iron 
and steel workers, machinists, and so on through a 
long list of occupations. 

Proportion of Women In Different Occupations 

When the men have passed by, the women march in 
regiments of one thousand each. They also march in 
sections and carry banners indicating the proportion 
employed in the United States in the different occupa¬ 
tions. 

The smallest group consists of only 2 per thousand. 
Their banner is that of “Public Service.” 

The second section of the regiment of women con¬ 
sists of 25. They are engaged in “Transportation.” 

The number of women engaged in “Trade” per one 
thousand is 78. 

The section made up of “Professional Service” is 
much larger: it consists of 119 women. 

“Agriculture, Forestry, and Animal Husbandry” 
claim the attention of 127 women out of every thou¬ 
sand engaged in gainful occupations. 


94 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


The sixth section of the regiment of female workers 
numbers 167. They are the stenographers, clerks, 
bookkeepers, and so forth. 

The next largest number of women in this typical 
regiment is 226. Their work is in “Manufacturing 
and Mechanical Industries.” 

The last group of women to be named are those 
engaged in “Domestic and Personal Sendee.” There 
are 256 of them per one thousand in the United States. 

Children at Work 

One of the most saddening things that can be read 
by a person with any imagination and any of the spirit 
of Christ in his make-up is the census report of the 
number of children ten to fifteen years of age engaged 
in gainful occupations. 

We are placing a frightful mortgage upon the to¬ 
morrow of our nation’s life when we allow 1,060,858 
children, not one of whom is over fifteen years of age, 
to be gainfully employed all the time, as was true dur¬ 
ing the year 1920. It is more startling if we remem¬ 
ber that this number is 8.5 per cent of all of the chil¬ 
dren in our country between the ages of ten and fifteen. 
Progress is being made with regard to the abolition of 
child labor; but much is yet to be done. 

That little children were ever driven to rude and 
ill-paid toil by day and by night for profit will seem 
as preposterous to the next generation as the fact 
that human beings were once bought and sold in 
slavery seems to us to-day. The blind greed of parents 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


95 


that forced or allowed little ones to work in mill and 
mine and factory, as well as the ruthless industrial 
system that encouraged such an unmitigated curse, will 
be roundly denounced in life’s to-morrows. The 
church, recognizing that the child is the material out 
of which the kingdom of God is built, has for years 
insisted that child labor must go. 

Youth and Employment 

The young men and young women of to-day are 
either at work or in school. Only a few years more 
and they will be the men and women who will be classi¬ 
fied in the census report according to different occupa¬ 
tions. It is a pretty safe guess that if some one will 
take the census reports of 1930 and of 1940 and work 
out the proportion engaged in different occupations 
as I have worked it out in the preceding paragraphs, 
the numbers will not differ greatly from the numbers 
which I have given. That is only another way of 
saying that the youth of America to-day will be en¬ 
gaged in the same sort of occupations to-morrow, in 
a general way, that the men and women of America 
are engaged in to-day. 

There are some improvements which they can make. 
Labor-saving devices for the heavy work of farm and 
mill and mine, better conditions of work, more toler¬ 
able living conditions, an increasing amount of “head 
work” and a relatively decreasing amount of hand¬ 
work—-all of these things will doubtless take place. 
But there is another change which I pray God may 


96 


S 

THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


take place also, and that is a new spirit with regard 
to all work. 

Unlabeled Christian Service 

We have been in the habit of thinking of a few 
different fields of activity as being properly Chris¬ 
tian. We speak of the gospel ministry, of the dea¬ 
coness work, of the missionary calling, and possibly 
of a few other occupations, as Christian service. 

We are not entitled to call our civilization Christian 
until every occupation becomes a Christian occupation. 
In some instances it will have to be the work that will 
be scrapped. In other instances it simply means the 
doing of the work in a conscious Christian spirit. Any 
work which cannot be done in the name of God, and in 
which we cannot recognize ourselves as coworkers 
with God, will have to go. That is why the traffic in 
intoxicating liquors was foredoomed in any Christian 
civilization. That is why no Christian can be engaged 
in anything that is immoral. 

But there are other occupations which are not im¬ 
moral, but which up until to-day have been practically 
unmoral. There are some occupations which funda¬ 
mentally and essentially ought to be Christian, but 
which have been conducted in an absolutely unchristian 
spirit. 

When a person enters the ministry or the missionary 
work he is conscious of the fact that in all of his work 
he is a coworker with God. This consciousness lends 
his work an unspeakable solemnity and beauty. The 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


97 


thing I am pleading for is that when a person enters 
any other field of human activity he makes himself con¬ 
scious of the fact that in it also he is a coworker with 
God. This will dignify his work and help him in the 
finest development of a Christian character. When he 
does his work in such a spirit he will be making a life 
as well as a living. 

Let us take the more general classifications of oc¬ 
cupations and see just how this would work out. 

Farmers as Christian Stewards 

We discovered that nearly thirty per cent of the men 
and nearly thirteen per cent of the women workers of 
the United States are engaged in agriculture, forestry, 
and animal husbandry. So many of these people think 
only of the ceaseless grind of hard work. They be¬ 
come discouraged with the humdrum drudgery of it 
all. The weeds grow. The drought comes. The 
crops fail when prices are high, and prices fall when 
crops are good. In the loneliness and monotony the 
worker is in peril of becoming insensible to the divine 
calling of his job. 

But in the very highest sense of the word these peo¬ 
ple are coworkers with God. What a work theirs is! 
The wonders of the country are new with each rising of 
the sun. No one has ever heard a flower tell a smutty 
story, or the birds profane their Maker’s name. No 
one can grow a blade of grass; no one can grow a 
single thing without the help of God. The farmer 
plows the ground and harrows it, and sows the wheat 


98 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


or plants the corn. But it is God who secretes the life 
force within the grain of wheat or com which causes 
it to cull material from the soil, the air, and the water. 
It is God who causes the sun to shine and the rain and 
the snow and the dew to water and enrich the earth. 
When the wheat field is all billowy with waves of 
golden grain ready for the harvest, and when the corn¬ 
stalks become like soldiers, waving their tassel banners 
over the battlements of want, the glorious result has 
been achieved by the cooperation of God and man. 
Man could not have done it alone, and God would 
not have done it alone. 

When some missionary takes food to starving 
heathen populations, he is sure that he is doing a work 
of God. Is he not a missionary? Being a missionary 
who has dedicated his life to the service of God, all 
that he does is Christian service. Even so, when a per¬ 
son in America grows fruit or vegetables or meat or 
grain or anything for the feeding of those who other¬ 
wise would be hungry, for the sheltering of those who 
otherwise would be homeless, for the clothing of those 
who otherwise would be naked, he is doing Christ’s 
service. How much finer it would make his work if he 
would conscientiously give himself to God and recog¬ 
nize himself as a coworker with God! 

Of course the implication of all of this is that the 
owners and managers, as well as the workers, on all 
kinds of farms and gardens and lumber camps must 
see to it that only Christian conditions prevail wher¬ 
ever they are. 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


99 




When All Trade Becomes Christian 

Many missionaries, who never have any doubt con¬ 
cerning their Christian calling, bring back pictures 
from their mission fields in which they will show us 
the difference which Christ has made among savages. 
Here they show us a picture of an African village 
where all the natives are naked. That was before the 
missionary rendered his Christian service among them. 
Alongside of it is another picture of the same village, 
only that now they are clothed. The clothing of these 
people is an evidence of the Christlike work which the 
missionary has done. 

Again, we are told wonderful stories of how milk 
and groceries and other kinds of foodstuffs have been 
supplied by the missionary to people in need. Or we 
are told of the developing of a sound commercial and 
trade life, of the establishing of banks as a sign of 
civilization. 

All of this is right and proper. The missionary is 
doing just what he ought to do when he holds those 
things up as evidence of his Christian service. But 
why should not all people engaged in trade recognize 
their work as being Christian also, and themselves as 
coworkers with God in the doing of it? If they would 
consciously recognize themselves as properly doing 
Christian service when they work in a store or a bank 
or in any other sphere of trade, it would make impos¬ 
sible trickery and deceit and the hypocrisy and the 
little dishonesties that characterize so much of trade 



> i 


IOO 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


to-day. If the trader knew that he was trading as a 
servant of Jesus Christ, that the chief reason why he 
was engaged in trade was not to make money for him¬ 
self, but to serve humankind in the spirit of the Master, 
he would become so much more than merely a 
merchant. 

God's Clerks 

In the olden days a group of religious men were 
known as scribes. Their business was to copy certain 
writings. In the Middle Ages there was a religious 
order of monks whose chief business was to copy 
manuscripts. A couple of years ago one of the most 
devoted Christian young women I know went to South 
America to work with Bishop Oldham as a clerk and 
stenographer. The scribes, the monks, and this young 
woman all felt themselves called of God to holy work. 
They were motivated by the spiritual conception of 
life rather than by the materialistic conception. It 
was fine—especially the consecration of the young 
woman whom I know. 

But why should not the clerks and bookkeepers and 
stenographers and accountants and others engaged in 
clerical occupations enter their work with the same 
spirit of consecration? If they are working for any 
one of these general groups of occupation which we 
discover to be essentially Christian, their work is just 
as much Christian. If they are doing clerical work in 
connection with agriculture or mining or trade or 
transportation, the same reasons that make those oc- 



YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


IOI 


cupations Christian make their clerical work in con¬ 
nection therewith Christian. The important thing is 
that they shall be conscious of the Christian character 
of it, that they shall recognize themselves as coworkers 
with God in human service. Then the temptations that 
arise, whether they be temptations to dishonesty or 
temptations resulting from the free and easy inter¬ 
mingling of the sexes, or whatever they may be, will 
be much more easily resisted, for the clerical worker, 
conscious of his Christian calling, will be making a life 
as well as a living. 

Caesar and God 

One time, enemies of Jesus tried to trap him by ask¬ 
ing him whether it was right to render tribute unto 
Caesar. We admire the mental agility which he dis¬ 
played in his answer by asking them for a coin. They 
gave him one, and then he inquired whose the super¬ 
scription was upon it. They told him Caesar’s. Where¬ 
upon he said: “Render to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God's.” An¬ 
other time when he was being questioned by Pilate, he 
informed that governor that he (Pilate) could have no 
authority if it were not given him from above. Paul 
was quite insistent upon recognizing the divine char¬ 
acter of public service. 

It would be a fine thing to-day if people could see 
that the rendering of service to civil government is 
just as much a part of the teaching of Jesus as is the 
rendering unto God the things that are God’s. It 


102 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


would be a fine thing if all public officials would be¬ 
come conscious of the fact that they have no power 
unless it be given them from above. From the Presi¬ 
dent of the United States down to the garbage man 
they are coworkers with God. The great Presidents 
—Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Wilson—have 
always been conscious of this fact. Presidents, con¬ 
gressmen, governors, legislators, judges, sheriffs, 
mayors, councilmen, and all the rest of them stand as 
helpers of God in maintaining order and in advancing 
and instituting laws in harmony with the Divine idea 
of progress. If they become conscious of this fact, 
it will at once banish malfeasance in office; it will for¬ 
ever make impossible sinister legislation that is bought 
and paid for by those whom it benefits; it will spell 
the death-knell of corruption in politics. 

A policeman ought to recognize his work as being 
fundamentally Christian. The little girl was not far 
wrong when in her childish inability to pronounce 
plainly, she called him a “peace-man.” When he recog¬ 
nizes his w'ork as Christian, then gambling, prostitu¬ 
tion, and vice of every form will be unable to buy pro¬ 
tection as it too often does to-day. 

Firemen full-often sacrifice themselves in a perfectly 
Christlike spirit for the sake of others. The sixth 
commandment, which protects life, and the eighth com¬ 
mandment, which protects property, on their reverse 
sides carry a recognition of the divine character of a 
fireman’s work. If the fireman becomes conscious of 
this, and lives as a covvorker with God ought to live, 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


103 

his work will mean a thousand times more to him than 
it otherwise can. 

Digging Out What God Has Stored Up 

We have seen that over a million men in the United 
States are engaged in the extraction of minerals. 
There are many fine, high-type men among them; 
but recent years have shown too often that selfishness 
characterizes both the operatives and the operators. 
Too often both employees and employers have held 
thoughts as black as the mines from which the minerals 
are taken. What a sensible thing it would be if all of 
them would consciously become coworkers with God! 
That is what they essentially are. It was God who, 
millions of years ago, untwisted the perpetual sum¬ 
mer’s golden sunbeams of the Carboniferous Age and 
packed them away in the veins of coal. It was God 
who ribbed the hills with rocks and iron and lead and 
zinc. It was God who through his habits which we call 
the laws of nature deposited the rich gold and silver in 
their hiding places. It was God who filled the pockets 
of the earth with the gas and the oil so serviceable 
to us of to-day. 

Whenever people are freezing and a congregation in 
some church takes up a collection to buy fuel for 
them, everybody feels good over his contribution, for 
it has been done in the name of Christ. When mis¬ 
sionaries, by their teaching of the all-power of the 
one good God, are able to disillusion the Chinese con¬ 
cerning the dragon that dwells in the earth, and thus 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


104 

are able to induce them to mine their rich deposits of 
coal and iron, we feel that the missionary has rendered 
true Christian service. And so he has. 

Would it not be a fine thing if every miner and every 
mine operator would become conscious of the fact that 
he is a coworker with God in dragging forth to the 
sunlight the minerals which God has deposited ? They 
are the ones who bring out the coal, so that when the 
match is applied God’s sunlight of a million years ago 
is released for the service of us of to-day. They are 
the ones who drag forth the ores that can be shaped 
into any form of beauty or usefulness. 

But when they all become true Christians, and are 
conscious of it, all of the bickerings and disputes and 
selfishness and crass materialism and grasping, greedy 
overreaching that characterize this whole field of serv¬ 
ice to-day will be a thing of the past. 

Godly Transportation 

A baby is sick, and a Christian carries it fresh milk. 
A family is cold, and a Christian hauls them a load 
of coal. A widow is hungry, and a Christian carries 
her a basket of bread. A man is sick unto death, and 
a Christian takes a physician to see him in his automo¬ 
bile. A mother is homesick to hear from her boy in 
a distant city, and a Christian carries her a message 
from him. All of these things are so beautiful and 
they have been done by people whose lives are con¬ 
sciously dedicated to the service of God. We are glad 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 105 

to say that in every instance Christian service was 
rendered by some coworker with God. 

Out of every one thousand people at work in the 
United States sixty-nine of them are engaged in just 
that kind of work. The only difference is that it is 
done on such a big scale that the personal element is 
missing, and it is scarcely ever done in the name of 
Christ. Why should not all of the people who are en¬ 
gaged in the great work of transportation become just 
as conscious of the Christian element in it as the indi¬ 
viduals whom we have imagined above? God does 
not want people to be cold or hungry or naked or 
suffering. When we bring relief to people we are 
helping God to do the thing he wants done. 

What tales of heroism might be related of the serv¬ 
ice rendered by telephone and telegraph operators, but 
sublime as are their outstanding achievements when 
fire or flood threatens destruction to communities, their 
finest service has been rendered in the unheralded, in¬ 
conspicuous, and unknown work of the daily grind. 
Think what would happen if to-morrow morning there 
should not be a single telephone or telegraph service 
of any description in America. Business would be 
disorganized. Suffering and bewilderment would 
result. 

But when the whole business of transportation shall 
become purposeful and consciously Christian, we will 
not be faced with the spectacle of the strikes and lock¬ 
outs that have disgraced our civilization in recent 
years. Justice and righteousness and a passion to serve 


106 THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 

rather than to gain will characterize employers and em¬ 
ployees alike. 

Is the Golden Rule a Fit Rule for Industry? 

We have seen that three hundred and thirty out of 
every thousand men and two hundred and twenty- 
seven out of every thousand women employed in the 
United States are in the manufacturing and mechanical 
industries. They are working upon the raw materials 
which God prepared for them. They are creators with 
God. The apostle says that “We are God’s workman¬ 
ship.’’ God worked upon us. The psalmist said that 
we are “but little lower than God.” We are creators. 
The cotton and wool and iron and steel and clay and 
lumber and paint and leather and other things with 
which we work are the materials supplied to us by the 
goodness of God, and the things we make out of them 
are our workmanship. The things made are generally 
for the service and comfort of human kind. Would 
to God that every worker in this vast field would be¬ 
come conscious of the fact that his service can be and 
ought to be essentially Christian service, even though 
it may not be labeled as such! Would to God that 
every person who, by reason of his position of influ¬ 
ence and power in the control or management of in¬ 
dustry, so profoundly determines the conditions affect¬ 
ing the lives of millions of people, could sense the 
tremendous responsibility that rests upon him as a co¬ 
worker with God! God expects all such to act toward 
others as they would have others act toward them if 


\ 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 107 

their positions were reversed. The capitalist and the 
laboring man are brothers under the Fatherhood of 
God. The elevation of industry to the sphere of con¬ 
scious Christian service would automatically settle all 
of the problems that are breaking the heart of the in¬ 
dustrial world to-day. 

The stress and strife and struggle of our time are 
industrial and economic for commercial advantage. 
Our sins are industrial; our injustices are industrial; 
even vice has been commercialized; political scandals, 
due to commercial corruption, come and go. Every¬ 
where there is a heart-breaking unrest. Rich men and 
poor men do not understand each other. Industry 
absorbs the life of the people. Successfully covetous 
people think they do not need the church, and the un¬ 
successful feel that the church is muzzled by its rich 
pewholders, and dare not speak out against the crass 
materialism and gross injustice which, like dry rot, are 
eating the very heart out of our life. The truth is we 
must have a message for an industrial age, or cease to 
be moral leaders. 

There are some important things that we ought 
to get fixed firmly in our minds. The first point to be 
noted in this connection is: that the church has exerted 
an influence upon successive generations only in pro¬ 
portion as it has seized control of the deminant creative 
forces. 

Whether we are willing to admit it, or to see it, or 
not, we are entering upon a new day. May it not 
easily be that all the stress and strain of the bewilder- 


io8 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


ing world-conditions of to-day are but the birth-throes 
of a new era ? 

Certain people have striven long to create a class 
consciousness among laboring people; but to-day they 
are not only class conscious, they are pow r er conscious. 

Nearly every government of Europe now has some 
form of social democracy. Regardless of our likes or 
dislikes, there is bound to be a larger measure of in¬ 
dustrial democracy in this country. 

It is by no means a foregone conclusion that the new 
democracy is an unmitigated power for good; neither 
is it a foregone conclusion that it is a power for evil. 
Whether it is a potency for good or evil depends upon 
whether it is used selfishly or unselfishly; that is to 
say, whether it is Christian or materialistic. 

The church must save the labor movement from the 
materialistic philosophy that is trying to capture it. 
Belief is altogether important. A wrong head in¬ 
variably eventuates in a ivrong heart. A materialistic 
conception of life breeds low aims, selfishness, revenge. 

While saving the labor movement from the material¬ 
ism of a purely economic revolution, the church must 
recognize and develop the spiritual potentiality of the 
movement—its international sense, its passion for 
liberty, its insistence upon human rights as superior to 
property rights. 

The church must demonstrate that it lacks no inter¬ 
est in bettering the conditions of the workers. The 
Interchurch World Movement’s investigation of the 
steel strike will do more to regain the confidence of 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


109 


the workers than anything that has been done in a 
long while. It will help the church to overcome the 
suspicion of class favoritism. 

The church must apply the Ten Commandments so¬ 
cially. It must develop a social conscience. 

The church must insist upon the modern movements 
following the theme of the Old-Testament prophets, 
which is economic freedom won by the power of reli¬ 
gious faith. 

The old system may continue in the new day; but the 
old spirit of greed and revenge and overreaching and 
selfishness is doomed as sure as there is a God. 

Before we can have a Utopia we must have 
Utopians. The church must produce men and women 
who represent the attitude and the consequent behavior 
of Jesus Christ. 

The Newspaper Business 

The public press of to-day is the recipient both of 

caustic criticism and of fulsome flatterv. The whole 

* 

truth does not rest with either side. 

One of the worst things about the newspaper is that 
though it has a magnificent opportunity to serve, it 
exists primarily to make money. It is a commercial 
institution. It has become a vast industry. There are 
tens of thousands of establishments printing and pub¬ 
lishing newspapers in the United States. The capital 
invested runs into the hundreds of millions. The 
newspaper has to get money to pay expenses. It is 
organized chiefly for profit. This intense commercial- 


no 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


ization tends to make extinct the great editors such as 
Greeley, Bennett, or Dana. Moreover, too often, the 
only visible excuse for the existence of some news¬ 
papers is to advance the political, social, or business 
ambitions of their proprietors. Criticism is also 
offered that news is suppressed or distorted for profit 
or for some other unworthy purpose. Too often the 
newspaper misleads the electorate. Newspapers seem 
to be controlled by corrupt interests or are in the hands 
of their advertisers. This is especially dangerous if 
the advertising is unworthy. Inaccuracy or slipshod 
methods or criminal negligence or the reckless jump¬ 
ing to conclusions is also an indictment of many mod¬ 
ern newspapers. The tendency toward exaggeration 
or extravagances is a very dangerous thing if it de¬ 
velops into an unorganized and inflammable sentiment 
that displaces public opinion. The public press is also 
adversely criticized for focusing attention upon the 
evil that men do rather than the good. 

But in spite of the worst things that can be said 
against the newspaper business, the fact remains that 
it holds tremendous possibilities for every one engaged 
in it, from the proprietor or editor to the operator of 
the linotype machine or the newsboy on the street 
corner, to become coworkers with God. Journalism is 
more purposeful to-day than ever before in all its his¬ 
tory. It feels itself a quasi-public utility. Newspapers 
are not oracles nor bulwarks nor palladia, nevertheless 
they are advocates of the people. They have aided be¬ 
yond measure in bringing to pass great reforms. They 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


hi 


help shape democracy. They are the medium of in¬ 
telligent publicity. They knit the people into a homo¬ 
geneous whole. They are potent forces molding 
democracy. They are becoming much less reckless in 
their handling of personalities. They are of great 
educational value, and avenues through which world 
knowledge comes to us. They are to the average 
American citizen what the Grecian oracle at Delphi 
was to the ancient Greek. If they tend to “yellow” 
the news, it is because they believe that is the way we 
want it, for they reflect us. If feverish haste makes 
them inaccurate or causes them to guess at what is 
going to happen, it is because too many of us live only 
in the moment that is passing. 

Journalism and all of the work connected with it 
may be made a sacred calling. The high commission 
which Jesus placed upon each one of us is this: “Seek 
first the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God on 
earth can flourish only when men have right relations 
with one another and with God; when they think right 
thoughts and are moved by right feelings and possess 
the right attitude. The motive power of the king¬ 
dom of God is public opinion, and everyone who con¬ 
tributes to the creation and maintenance of a sound, 
generous and wholesome public opinion is promoting 
the advancement and reign of the kingdom of God on 
the earth. Everybody engaged in the publishing busi¬ 
ness has a great opportunity to create and maintain 
the motive power of the kingdom of God. What a 
triumph it would be if everybody connected with the 


112 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


business would consciously dedicate himself to God, 
and so run his part of the business that the Almighty 
looking upon it could say, “In this I am well pleased”! 

The Medical Profession 

Physicians, surgeons, and trained nurses, in their 
profession, remind us of the Great Physician. 

The physician who lies in his diagnosis, in his prog¬ 
nosis, or in his treatment is not entitled to be named 
as a follower of the Great Physician, who not only 
assuaged human suffering but who himself was the 
Truth. 

But the true physician of to-day frowns upon deceit 
and trickery as much as anybody can. The physician, 
in the very nature of the case, has to be one of the 
most unselfish of men, for he works to prevent sick¬ 
ness, which means his money. Physicians treat drunk¬ 
ards and drug fiends. They decry and preach against 
social evil and venereal diseases. They keep sacred 
the secrets of wives and husbands. They hold in¬ 
violate the faith of their patients. They administer 
charity unpublished. They treat the poor free. They 
labor for the prevention of defectives. They are inter¬ 
ested in legislation, and work against odds for the 
passing of laws in the interest of health and em¬ 
ployees’ compensations. They accept all risks for the 
sake of others. 

When a trained young man or woman goes abroad 
as a medical missionary, the going is as a sacrament. 
All of the work is wrapped round and round, like a 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


ii3 

divine defense, with the consciousness of fellowship 
with God. Why should not the young man or woman 
entering the medical profession here at home take it 
up as a Christian calling, knowing that at the best it 
is partnership with Him who went about doing good, 
and who drove back the power of the shadow of 
death ? 

Teachers and the Great Teacher 

The teaching profession occupies a central place in 
social influence. It offers a threefold opportunity to 
serve. It is not the exclusive factor, but it is a mighty 
important one in interpreting the past, in preserving 
the present, and in determining the future. 

Any wise, forceful, thoughful, purposeful teacher 
wields an unlimited power. It is effective, but never 
spectacular; certain, but hidden; enduring, but not 
tenuous; obscure, but directive. The teacher can fill 
the young mind with ideas, and many ideas rationally 
related, which are the motives for his conduct, present 
and future; and the youth cannot save himself from 
them even though he were conscious of their source. 
The rationalistic, yet respectful, attitude toward the 
problems of the present day attests the power of the 
teachers who have sent out the men and the women to 
teach and to preach. 

What an opportunity to teach mercy, charity, kind¬ 
ness, justice. These are Christian virtues, and the 
Christian teacher teaches them according to the stand¬ 
ards of Jesus. Many children never hear them taught 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


ii4 

except at school. Many children of this nation never 
go to Sunday school or to church; but most of them 
do attend day schools, and here they learn les¬ 
sons of order, direction, control, and neighborliness 
that they otherwise would not learn. 

Surely, the teaching profession ought to be con¬ 
sidered a Christian calling. Let every young man and 
woman who enters it do so with the sustaining con¬ 
sciousness upon him that he is walking in the foot¬ 
steps of the Great Teacher. 

The Home-Maker 

More women in the United States are employed in 
the one great holy occupation than in any other, and 
yet this occupation was not listed among the “gainful 
occupations.” Their work may not be gainful as the 
Census Bureau understands it, but civilization has 
gained more by what they have done than through the 
work of anybody else. They are the home-makers. 

I heard a man once say, “I care not what great man 
you name, I can always name a greater woman.” 

A man in the audience thereupon named Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Immediately the speaker replied, “Abraham Lin¬ 
coln’s mother.” 

I saw a cartoon in a newspaper a few years ago. 
The label of the cartoon was “February in Kentucky 
in 1809.” The cartoonist had pictured a typical back- 
woods scene. The hills and hollows were white with 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


XI 5 

snow. The trees were bending beneath their snowy 
burden. Two men had met in the lonely road of the 
backwoods. One was on foot and the other was on 
horseback. A dog stood by the man on foot, all drawn 
up with its tail between its legs, suggestive of the 
stormy winds. The men were dressed in the tradi¬ 
tional way of the pioneers, with their cowhide boots, 
coon-skin caps, and homemade garments. The tail 
and mane of the horse were blowing in the winds, 
and its breath had frozen to its nostrils. The man 
on foot addressed the man on horseback in some such 
words as these: 

“What’s the news, neighbor?” 

Then the man on horseback told about some one 
whom they both knew going down to see Madison 
ushered in as President, and remarked about this 
“Bonaparte feller” raising a row in Europe, and other 
matters of general interest, and then he inquired: 

“What’s the news up this way, neighbor?” 

“O, nothin’,” he replied; “nothin’ ever happens up 
this way. A boy baby was born down at Lincoln’s 
cabin the other day. Nothin’ much ever happens up 
here.” 

Yet greater than the inauguration of Madison, 
greater than the marshaling of armies by Napoleon, 
was the bearing of the boy baby, Abraham Lincoln. 
And throughout the years that followed, the greatest 
thing that was happening in this country was the quiet, 
unostentatious work of a good woman in a rude 
frontier cabin, teaching a boy to love the truth and 


ii 6 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


to hate a lie; teaching him to trust God and to love 
God, and to believe that the best way to serve God was 
by serving Christ’s little ones. When that good woman 
lay dying, and her big, uncouth husband was sitting 
by her bedside, trying to comfort her, she talked con¬ 
stantly of Abe, and told Abe’s father of her dreams 
for Abe. Then, in his awkward way trying to say 
something that would be pleasing to her, he said, “But 
he can’t sing like you, mother.” 

“No,” she replied, “but maybe he will make others 
sing! 

And when she so spoke it was with a mother’s 
prophetic insight; for he set a whole race to singing 
songs of freedom. 

Historians are glad to say that it was the Wesleyan 
Revival that saved England the horrors of the French 
Revolution. The Wesleyan Revival was due to one 
man, and that one man, John Wesley, owed his whole 
bent of character to the work of a mother who had 
sixteen other children to take care of. 

The greatest thing that happened in Europe in the 
latter part of the Middle Ages was not happening in 
some bespangled court, and was not being noted by 
chroniclers of events. It was the rearing of a boy 
by the name of Martin Luther in the home of a Ger¬ 
man coal miner. 

When we are talking about unlabeled Christian 
service, let us hasten to include the Christian homer 
makers, and let all young people who are establishing 
homes consciously invite Christ to be the abiding guest 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


it 7 

in their homes. Then there can take place in those 
homes only the things upon which he can pronounce 
his benediction. 

The Thing Altogether Important 

Enough has been said to illustrate what I mean by 
unlabeled Christian service. When soldiers and tax 
collectors were awakened to repentance by the preach¬ 
ing of John the Baptist, and asked him what they 
should do, he did not tell them that they must leave 
the work in which they were engaged; but simply told 
the one to stop his violence, and the other to stop his 
dishonesty. Jesus selected only twelve out of all of 
those whom he reached to give up permanently their 
work and follow him. Not everybody can go into 
specifically Christian work, but everybody can be a 
Christian in the work which he is doing. Character is 
more important than calling. It is not necessarily al¬ 
together bad to make money if the money be made 
honestly; if the money is owmed by a person rather 
than being the owner of a person. Money, in the 
Christian sense, is multiplied personality through 
which a Christian serves where he himself cannot go. 
The trouble with the rich young ruler who went away 
from Christ sorrowful was that his soul wanted to 
mount upward like an eagle, but he was chained down, 
and the chain was a chain of gold. The plea, the 
earnest plea, is that the youth of America will Chris¬ 
tianize every sphere of human activity. 


n8 THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


Special Christian Life Service 

There will always be a necessity for some people 
giving themselves to the interpretive phase of life. 
No matter how thoroughly we may Christianize our 
civic, commercial, industrial, and professional life, 
there will still be a need for some people whose chief 
business it is to interpret God to man. 

The preacher is the successor of the prophet. He 
has a distinct calling to his work of keeping alive the 
spirit of Christianity, of bringing men into the mood 
of God, and of holding them there. Think what this 
world would be without spiritual leaders and without 
churches. Think of the reforms that have been ac¬ 
complished only because some preachers were willing 
to be misunderstood and ridiculed and traduced and 
vilified for the right. There is scarcely a movement 
that has made for the dignifying of manhood and the 
sweetening of human life that does not owe its origin 
to some preacher or preachers. 

There are many things that make the ministry 
sublimely attractive: the delightful fellowships, the 
position of influence and power, and the opportunities 
for intellectual pursuit. But the greatest thing about 
the ministry is the consciousness that it is preeminently 
the work of God. The very challenge that it offers 
to the spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of others 
makes it attractive. It offers an unparalleled oppor¬ 
tunity to render service in a thoroughly fundamental 
way. 


YOUTH AND EMPLOYMENT 


119 

This applies to the ministry in the commanding 
pulpits of the city or the most remote place in the 
country; it applies equally in America or in the foreign 
mission field. What I have said about the ministry 
may be said about every phase of special Christian 
service, such as the deaconess work, the teaching mis¬ 
sionary, the director of religious education, and all 
the rest of them. 

In making life’s decisions, every youth of America 
should ask this question first: “Is there any good rea¬ 
son why I should not give myself wholly and abso¬ 
lutely to some special form of Christian service?” If 
the answer is that because of lack of education or 
because of temperamental unfitness or because of 
meagerness of talents, the ministry or some other form 
of special Christian life service cannot be chosen, 
then the youth should resolve by high Heaven’s help 
to render the most unblemished type of unlabeled 
Christian service. 


CHAPTER V 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 

America is the result of all that is great in bygone 
times. The political strivings of the past are alive in 
our republic to-day. It was only on the roaring loom 
of time that the framers of the American Constitu¬ 
tion found the stuff woven for such a vesture of their 
thought and experience as they were meditating. 

But American democracy as such begins when the 
Mayflower crosses the Atlantic. We look out across 
the gulf of years, through the fogs and mists of wrong, 
and see the approaching white sails of that historic 
ship. Within its cabin are the Pilgrim Fathers. What 
are they seeking? Can they hope to find anything that 
will compensate them for what they have left behind 
—their native country with its worldly cheer, its 
throne, its wealth, its established church, its annals, 
and the sacred mounds where their sires slumbered? 
Arriving at Plymouth, they step upon a frozen shore, 
as bleak and cold as the shores of death; the snow¬ 
flake upon their cheek melts into a tear. But as they 
kneel to pray the very snow seems warm. Why? Be¬ 
cause they have found that for which they left the old 
home—liberty, the right to worship God according to 
the dictates of their own consciences, and to govern 
themselves. 


120 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


1 2t 


As we look, we see the nesting of the cabins, we see 
the woodsmen felling the tree, the settlers driving back 
the stealthy savage, the threading of forest paths, the 
subduing of grasses, the draining of swamps, and the 
nurturing of social and religious liberty. 

By and by, when a tyrant hand threatens to wrest 
from them their new-found liberty, they rise as one 
man. Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, Saratoga, 
Valley Forge, Yorktown, tell the story of their stout 
defense. 

Their deep devotion to liberty was reaffirmed in the 
war with Tripoli, the second war with Great Britain, 
and in those dark days of 1861 to 1865, when the boys 
in blue marched southward and met the boys in gray 
with such an awful concussion that it seemed as 
though it would break the land asunder; but it only set 
more firmly in their little-square-heaven-of-blue the 
stars of “Old Glory,” and shook the shackles from the 
wrists of the slaves. Still later, when the cry of op- / 
pressed Cuba throbbed upon America’s ears, once again 
our sons unsheathed the sword to drive the haughty 
tyrant from the western hemisphere. When the world 
war had been going on for two and a half years the 
United States, being unable longer to keep out of it, 
entered in with a firm and steadfast determination to 
win the war, and thus make the world safe for democ¬ 
racy. 

Such is the America the historian knows. The fate 
of the coming years, so far as America is concerned, 
rests with the American youth of to-day. 


122 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


I. Dangers Confronting the Republic 

But with all of its glory, America faces grave dan¬ 
gers in this day. There is nothing wrong about a 
citizen calling attention to the sore spots of the nation. 
A good citizen does not gloat over them, but he notes 
them with the same prayerful yearning with which a 
mother notes the feverish delirium of her child; he 
calls attention to them only as a physician calls atten¬ 
tion to the festering sore of a patient whom he loves 
and whom he yearns to restore to perfect health. 

i. A Heterogeneous Population 

From every land under the sun immigrants have 
been pouring into our country. Often this flood of 
immigrants, who have come from the rural sections of 
other countries, is regurgitated upon our cities, where 
they establish their “Little Italy,” “Little Poland,” 
“Little Russia/' or little whatnot. There, where they 
learn their ideals of Americanism from the basest ele¬ 
ments of our population, they live in the grassless, 
treeless grime of a big city, packed like sardines in a 
box. The total foreign white stock in the United 
States on January i, 1920, was 36,398,958. By “for¬ 
eign white stock” is meant the total foreign-born white 
population plus the native white population having 
one or both parents foreign born. The corresponding 
total for 1910 was 32,243,382. The increase of the 
foreign-white stock between 1910 and 1920 was, there¬ 
fore, 4,155,576, or 12*9 per cent. 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


123 


The total for 1920 includes 13,712,754 who were 
foreign born and came to this country as immigrants, 
and 22,686,204 who were born in this country but 
whose parents, one or both, were immigrants. 

The classification of the foreign white stock by 
country of origin is based upon the prewar map of 
Europe, partly because of the difficulty of adjusting 
the returns in regard to the birthplace of parents so 
as to agree with the changed boundaries of European 
countries and partly in order that comparisons might 
be made with the figures of the previous census, taken 
in 1910. The names of the several countries, there¬ 
fore, Germany, Russia, Austria, etc., indicate the ter¬ 
ritory embraced within these countries before the 
European War. The total foreign white stock from 
each of the principal countries of origin was as fol¬ 
lows: Germany, 7,259,997; Ireland, 4,136,395; Rus- 
sia, 3,871,123; Italy, 3,336,945; Austria, 3,129,796; 
Canada, 2,603,828; England, 2,307,112; Sweden, 
1,457,382; Hungary, 1,110,905; Norway, 1,023,225. 

Of the 13,712,754 foreign-born white people in the 
United States in 1920, 12,498,720 persons were twenty- 
one years of age and over, of whom 6,208,697, or 
practically half were naturalized. The highest propor¬ 
tion of any nationality naturalized is the Welsh, more 
than 74 per cent of them having been naturalized. It 
reaches from this among different nationalities all the 
way down to the Mexicans, of whom only 5.5 per cent 
have been naturalized. Of the five countries which 
contributed the largest number of immigrants, the per- 


124 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


centage naturalized are as follows: natives of Ger¬ 
many, 73 per cent; of Ireland, 66 per cent; of Russia, 
42 per cent; of Italy, not quite 30 per cent; and of 
Poland, not quite 29 per cent. 

2. Racial Antipathy 

What signify those race riots in Chicago, where a 
man’s home was not his own, and he was forced to 
move merely because his skin was black; or those race 
riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the Negro section 
was swept by fire and human beings were shot down 
in cold blood, as though the ending of a human life 
were not a thing as solemn as the unfolding of unend¬ 
ing destinies? 

What has become of the Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence, and of our boasted equality of opportunity? Do 
we still hold to Christ’s doctrine of the sacredness of 
personality, that a man is valuable because he is a man 
—not because he is rich and not because he is poor; 
not because he is educated and not because he is un¬ 
educated; not because he is white and not because he 
is yellow or black; but because he is a man, an immortal 
child of God? Verily, racial antipathy is a sore spot 
on the nation. 

3. Disregard of Law 

Look at the symptoms yonder in the Boston riots, 
when the policemen went on strike, and low-browed 
men, unrestrained, yielded to the lust to loot and kill, 
until the rioters were dispersed by State troops. 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


125 


Look at the mob in Omaha, Nebraska, trying to get 
into the courthouse that they might snuff out a human 
life without due process of law, apparently ignorant 
of the fact that one crime never justifies another, and 
that two wrongs cannot make one right; or behold that 
courthouse in flames while the lynch mob look on with 
the malevolence of fiends. 

But the most disgraceful violation of law to-day is 
in connection with the enforcement of prohibition. 
The people of the United States in due and regular 
form amended their own Constitution so as to prohibit 
the use of and commerce in alcoholic liquors. A law 
was enacted by the Congress of the United States to 
enforce this provision of the Constitution. The liquor 
interests have never hesitated to launch a campaign of 
law defiance whenever they have been attacked by the 
courts or defeated by the elections. They are trying 
to do that now with regard to the prohibition law. 
They seem to think that wholesale violations and open 
liquor-selling will so disgust the people that they will 
come to believe that it is better to license the traffic 
than to have law trampled underfoot. There has been 
the wildest sort of misrepresentation concerning this 
law. Even in Boston (which we do not hold up as a 
model of prohibition enforcement) drunkenness among 
the foreign-born decreased 55 per cent in one year of 
prohibition as compared with an average year preced¬ 
ing prohibition; and among the nonresidents it de¬ 
creased 63 per cent; offenses against person decreased 
69 per cent; offenses against chastity decreased 32 per 


126 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


cent; and the total number of arrests decreased 27 per 
cent. In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (which in¬ 
cludes the great industrial city of Pittsburgh), the 
homicide record was broken for the first time in his¬ 
tory in prohibition’s first month. In that one month 
there were 90 per cent fewer cases of “jags,” with 
other attendant arrests reduced more than 50 per cent; 
and a minimum number of cases of alcoholism were 
reported from hospitals. The principal reason why 
such a record has not been maintained is simply be¬ 
cause of the incompetency or inefficiency of those 
whose duty it is to enforce the law, and because of the 
utter disregard of law on the part of the people. 

Every law should be strictly enforced and conscien¬ 
tiously obeyed. If it is a bad law, the surest way to 
have it repealed is to enforce it. If it is a good law, 
then in the very nature of the case it ought to be en¬ 
forced. Democracy rests upon respect for the will of 
the majority. Law in a democracy is but an expres¬ 
sion of public will. 

Whether it be law designed to protect life, or 
property, or the Sabbath day, or health, or public 
morals, or in whatsoever interest the law may have 
been framed, the flaunting disregard of it shakes the 
fabric of free institutions maintained in a government 
of, by and for the people. 

4. Low Views of Civic Duty 

Some people think it smart if they can avoid paying 
their taxes. Some vociferously plead for righteousness 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


127 


in public life, but fail to qualify as voters. Some re¬ 
main so utterly ignorant of the candidates and issues 
that they are not fit to vote at an election. Some are 
so slavishly devoted to a political party that they vote 
the ‘'straight ticket” regardless of the issues at stake 
or the character of the candidates. Some put selfish 
interests above the public good, and are unwilling to 
perform the more lowly forms of civic service such 
as the holding of petty offices, service on the jury, and 
witnessing in the courts. 

One of the most serious conditions facing us is the 
utter indifference of the best people in elections. 
Shortly before prohibition was achieved, 51,000 men 
signed “nolicense” petitions in Allegheny County, 
Pennsylvania. The court refused the petitioners, but 
stated that the place to express this desire was in elect¬ 
ing members of Legislature. The following summer 
there was such an election, and it was found that the 
majority of those petitioners were not eligible to vote. 
In one of the best sections, the seventh and eighth 
wards, about 1,500 had signed the petitions. Of these 
52 per cent were not even registered and only 48 per 
cent of those registered voted at the primaries; that is 
48 per cent of 48 per cent, or only 23 per cent of 
those who had petitioned for the abolition of the sa¬ 
loon, could even try to do the thing they had asked the 
judges to do for them. 

It should be remembered that this legislative district 
is composed of some of the finest parts of the city. 
In it are two each of the largest and richest churches 


128 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


of the Presbyterian, United Presbyterian, Episcopal, 
and Methodist Episcopal denominations, and at least 
a score of churches having memberships running from 
500 to over 2,000 each. Here, in a nutshell, is the 
explanation of the power of the baser element to con¬ 
trol politics. It is not a victory of the vicious element; 
it is a surrender of the virtuous element without a fight. 

Equally serious is the wholesale cheating that goes 
on in the elections. The tragedy about it all is that the 
public usually accepts election frauds as a joke. In 
a republican form of government the successful can¬ 
didate is the one who receives a majority of the votes. 
If these votes are honestly obtained, all of the people 
exercising their right to vote, no one has any serious 
ground for complaint; but the stealing of elections 
strikes at the very heart of government. Dishonest 
votes are obtained where resistance is weakest—where 
people are too poor to employ lawyers; where for¬ 
eigners, unacquainted with the language and customs 
of the country, live in constant fear of the ward- 
heeler and political boss who is tied up with the police 
power. Dishonest registrars can accomplish fraudu¬ 
lent registration; fraudulent tax orders and tax re¬ 
ceipts are obtained for purely fictitious persons. 
Crooked election judges and inspectors can count out 
the decent voter by substituting a ballot box that has 
been stuffed for the one in which the better citizens 
voted; a row can be stirred up at the voting place, and 
in the general melee that follows, ballots dishonestly 
marked are deposited; in tallying the votes they are 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


129 


miscalled, or reversely recorded, or “bunched,” or 
defaced, so that the will of the people is utterly 
thwarted. Unless we have elections at which all of the 
people vote, and in which honesty, and only honesty, 
obtains, the death-knell of our boasted freedom has 
been sounded. 

5. Illiteracy 

We think of Washington, Oregon, and California 
as great States. And so they are, with a total popula¬ 
tion of 5,566,871. But the number of illiterates in the 
United States above nine years of age is greater than 
the total population of those three great States, or 
6,342,637. In a republic where the people undertake 
to be their own kings they assume the responsibilities 
as well as the privileges of the prerogative. That is 
why illiteracy should alarm all who care for the na¬ 
tion’s life. 

6. Increasing Number of Tenant Farms 

Another alarming situation in the United States is 
the increasing percentage of tenant farms. It was the 
rule in the early days for the farmer to own his own 
farm. But note the increase in recent years. In 1880 
the percentage of tenant farms was 25; in 1890, 28; 
in 1900, 35; in 1910, 37; in 1920, more than 38. 

7. Industrial Discontent and Injustice 

Think also of the industrial discontent that vexes 
us. Ours is an industrial age. Our problems are in- 


130 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


dustrial. Our injustices are industrial. Our sins are 
industrial. The chief difference between the labor 
movement in this country and the labor movement in 
England is that in England it is largely in the hands 
of men who hold the spiritual conception of life, 
Wesleyan Methodists, most of them, while in this 
country too many of the labor leaders have sur¬ 
rendered to the materialistic conception of life. 

If this be too generally true of the labor leaders, 
it is no less true of the employers. Both groups alike 
are dominated by a crass, materialistic, selfish purpose. 
That is the symptom which is revealed by the situa¬ 
tion in Mingo, West Virginia, where a tent city shel¬ 
ters the families of striking miners, or where machine 
gunners are held prepared to repulse threatened attacks 
by miners. Describe that situation as an exaggerated 
Southern mountain feud, or as civil war, or however 
you please, the fact remains that it is a symptom indi¬ 
cating a sore spot on the nation’s life. 

Such troubles are but the intermittent fever indi¬ 
cating the unintermittent fever within; they are bub¬ 
bles escaping to the surface, revealing some rottenness 
beneath. Our boasted democracy and our talk of lov¬ 
ing our neighbors as ourselves seem rather pale in the 
light of the industrial injustices, unrest, selfishness and 
suspicions that prevail all over this land. 

II. Obligations of Citizenship 

Obligations spring out of all relationships. When 
two people enter into a business partnership, each one 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


131 

has obligations toward the business and toward his 
partner; when two people get married each one has 
obligations toward the home which they establish and 
toward the other party to the marriage contract; when 
children come into the home, albeit they had nothing 
to do with their arrival there, the parents and the chil¬ 
dren each have obligations one toward the other and 
all toward the home. 

There are many obligations that are not enforceable 
by human law or decrees of court; but they for that 
reason often rest the more imperatively upon the in¬ 
dividual. The more perfectly we discharge our obli¬ 
gations the greater is the blessing which comes to us. 
Delinquency on the part of one does not excuse the 
other from fidelity. The obligation of the individual 
to the tribe or the nation of which he is a member or 
a citizen, is just as important and just as binding as 
the obligation of a parent to his child or the child to the 
parent. The obligations of a citizen to this republic 
are surpassingly great because of the unique and prom¬ 
inent position which this republic holds among the na¬ 
tions of the earth. It is impossible to conceive of any 
more favorable conditions in which to make the ex¬ 
periment of self-government than America offers. 
Separated from the rest of the world by thousands of 
miles of boisterous sea, enriched by untold natural 
resources, founded by earnest men, America has every¬ 
thing to her advantage. If self-government fails here, 
it will be the supreme tragedy of the ages. 

A French monarch insolently trampled under foot 


132 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


the appeal of the people, and when some one dared to 
mention the state, he shouted, “I am the state!” In a 
very much truer sense each citizen of the United States 
of America may say, “I am the nation.” Each indi¬ 
vidual is responsible for the most conscientious and 
intelligent discharge of his civic duties. 

i. Assimilate the Immigrant 

Unity of national spirit is dependent upon like-mind- 
edness. When the Declaration of Independence was 
signed, the mass of white men in America were rather 
free and equal: they were like-minded. Five sixths of 
them spoke the English language; they pretty gener¬ 
ally had the same antecedents; they were largely of 
the same general religious faith; they had, for the 
most part, come to America with the identical passion 
for freedom. A like-mindedness and a self-conscious¬ 
ness are essential to the finest development of any 
people. It rests upon the youth of America to see that 
our towns and cities shall no longer be aggregations, 
but units. We must make impossible that thing known 
as “the German vote,” “the Jewish vote,” “the Rus¬ 
sian vote,” and so on. Ethnic segregation is not a 
good thing for the country. If these “Little Polands,” 
“Little Russias,” and “Little Italies” have been formed 
in America, it is largely because as soon as any of these 
foreign-speaking people have moved into a com¬ 
munity the old American stock has moved out. 

To “Americanize” a foreigner means infinitely 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


133 


more than persuading him to adopt American clothes 
and manners and the American attitude toward pol¬ 
itics. As long as we have a stratification of ethnic 
differences over a large extent of the country, and a 
stratification of population industrially and econom¬ 
ically, we will be cursed by a nationalistic group con¬ 
sciousness. 

There are many things conspiring toward the Amer¬ 
icanizing of the immigrants in our midst, such as: the 
tendency of the lower classes to imitate the upper 
class socially, the facilities of communication, the na¬ 
tional pastimes of baseball and motion pictures, the 
constant moving about of the population, the cheapness 
and omnipresence of the newspaper, the public school 
and the church. 

There is not much doubt but that the second and 
third generations will become “American’’ so far as 
all external marks are concerned. The American in¬ 
fluence is predominant. The English language is the 
language of business success. English is the common 
means of conversation even between different foreign 
groups. It is “E pluribus unum” in a new sense. 
There is a natural tendency for people to soak up the 
influences that surround them. 

Biologists know that by a natural law animals take 
the color of their environment. People do the same. 
The most serious thing about it, however, is that too 
often the immigrant begins at the bottom, and takes 
on the tone and character of the most un-American 
of Americans. The first “American” traits with which 


134 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


he becomes familiar are those characteristic of board¬ 
ing-house runners, shady employment agents, crooked 
real-estate men, extortionate taxi drivers and express- 
men, political ward-heelers, bootleggers, and unscru¬ 
pulous employers. From such “Americans” the for¬ 
eigner, no matter what motive brought him to our 
country, soon falls a victim to the intoxication of 
making money. 

The American youth ought to remember that the 
mere fact that he is able to trace a line of descent back 
to the first families or the Pilgrim Fathers does not 
in itself guarantee that he possesses the spirit of his 
ancestors. In all that is meant by an “American” the 
children of some foreign parents who came over 
steerage twenty years ago are just as truly Americans 
as some of the descendants of Revolutionary sires. 
Americanism is a spirit, a passion for liberty and jus¬ 
tice, a regard for the rights of the weak and oppressed, 
and a passionate devotion to Almighty God. 

The youth of America include a million and a quar¬ 
ter people under twenty-one years of age who were 
born in foreign countries, and probably ten million who 
are the children of foreign-born parents. 

Why should not our churches conduct classes in citi¬ 
zenship, instructing these new voters in the ideals of 
America? There are already one hundred and forty- 
six naturalized immigrants to every thousand white 
American voters. The number may be doubled when 
they become naturalized, and will become multiplied 
manyfold when the foreign-born immigrants become 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


135 


of age. The simple fact that a person is born in Amer¬ 
ica is not a guarantee that he is any better for that 
reason than one born in a foreign country. It often 
happens that the second generation of the foreigner is 
worse than the first so far as moral and religious con¬ 
ditions are concerned. The first, with all their nar¬ 
row prejudices, are members of some church or syna¬ 
gogue; but the second generation, disgusted with the 
crass greed, superstition, and formalism of the church 
with which they are acquainted, have turned away 
from all religion and governmental restraint to infi¬ 
delity and to anarchistic extremes. A few years ago 
four men went to the electric chair in New York for 
the murder of a notorious gambler named Rosenthal, 
all of them born in New York city, and all of them of 
foreign parentage. 

Verily, the responsibility rests upon us all to in¬ 
doctrinate these new Americans with the genius of 
America, for the traits of the American of to-morrow 
are being formed in the youth of to-day. 

We are not so much concerned about the absorption 
of all foreign peoples into the American life, and 
certainly we do not desire to make any conquest of 
them. We do not argue so much for fusion as we 
do for assimilation. The present-day reciprocal feel¬ 
ing of repulsion must give way to a new feeling of 
reciprocal values. Two bodies of water find a level— 
but it is a new level. It can never be the level of either 
body alone. It is even so with our heterogeneous popu¬ 
lation. The American life of to-morrow will find a 


136 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


new level. Whether it will be a higher or a lower level 
than the life which the historian has known rests with 
the youth of to-day, both native and foreign. 

2. Cultivate Brotherhood 

The brotherhood of man is one of the doctrines 
enunciated by Jesus which is absolutely essential to 
the safety of any democracy. When the American 
Declaration of Independence asserted the essential 
equality of individual rights, it was but the eighteenth- 
century way of phrasing the sermon that Saint Paul 
preached on Mars’ Hill. The method of expressing 
the spirit of brotherhood in the scheme of Jesus is the 
Golden Rule. 

If every youth in America would resolve to practice 
toward everybody else, without any equivocation or 
mental reservation of mind in him whatsoever, the 
Golden Rule, all of the problems that are breaking 
the heart of America to-day would disappear to-mor¬ 
row as fog is dissipated in the rising sun. 

As a single illustration take the question of racial 
antipathy: in the United States out of every 1,000 
people 897 are white, 99 are Negroes, 2 are Indians, 
1 is a Chinese, and 1 is a Japanese. Of the 897 white 
people, 553 were born here of native parentage, 130 
were born in foreign countries, and 214 were born 
in this country of foreign parentage. On the basis of 
the brotherhood of man, interpreted by the Golden 
Rule, could not the youth of America in one single 
generation break down the insane prejudices and un- 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


137 


Christian antipathies that exist among these races? 
This does not mean social equality between the Ne¬ 
groes and the whites. “Social equality” is a myth any 
way. The keeping alive of this ancient fallacy simply 
breeds ill will. That great Negro leader, Booker T. 
Washington, in a speech which he delivered at At¬ 
lanta in 1895, held up his right hand with his fingers 
outstretched and said: “In all things that are purely 
social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as 
the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” 

President Harding, in his speech at Birmingham in 
1921, said some thoroughly worthwhile things, in¬ 
cluding the following: 

“I would say let the black man vote when he is fit 
to vote, and prohibit the white man voting when he 
is unfit to vote.” 

“I wish that both the tradition of a solidly Demo¬ 
cratic South and the tradition of a solidly Republican 
black race might be broken up.” 

“I would insist upon equal educational opportunity 
for both.” 

“Men of both races may well stand uncompromis¬ 
ingly against every suggestion of social equality. Ra¬ 
cial amalgamation there cannot be. Partnership of 
the races in developing the highest aims of all humanity 
there must be if humanity is to achieve the ends which 
we have set for it.” 

“The black man should seek to be, and he should 
be encouraged to be, the best possible black man and 
not the best possible imitation of a white man.” 


138 THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 

The Negro will be the best American citizen only 
in proportion as he is true to the genius of America. 

The same thing may be said of the hurtful preju¬ 
dices stirred up every once in a while against Jews, 
Roman Catholics, and various other groups. If all of 
the youth of America will treat all others throughout 
their entire lives as they would like to have others 
treat them, our racial antipathies and blighting preju¬ 
dices will disappear. 

3. Breed Respect for Law 

A wholesome respect for law and order is the duty 
of every good citizen. If the youth of America prize 
this goodly heritage of liberty and self-government 
which is theirs, let them exact from themselves un¬ 
wavering and ungrudging obedience to all laws. If 
the law is unjust, then let them follow the constitu¬ 
tional method in removing the law from the statute 
books. Not only should they yield obedience them¬ 
selves, they should also hunt out offenders against the 
law and bring them to justice. The person who vio¬ 
lates the Constitution of the United States, including 
all the amendments thereto, is a traitor to his country 
just as truly as is the person who lends aid and com¬ 
fort to the enemy in time of war. Disregard of law 
is a boomerang that will come back upon the offender 
some day. While our population has been increasing 
one hundred and seventy per cent, crime in this coun¬ 
try has increased four hundred and seventy per cent. 

A good law never fails. A law is a statement of an 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


139 


ideal which experience has taught people they should 
seek to realize. If prohibition, for instance, should 
fail, it would not be the failure of the prohibition law: 
it would be the failure of the American people to do 
what they know they ought to do. 

It would be a wholesome thing for every young man 
and young woman in America to learn by heart and 
put into daily practice the exhortation of Abraham 
Lincoln: 

“Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every 
American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on 
her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and 
in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books 
and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpits, 
proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in courts 
of justice; and, in short, let it become the political 
religion of the nation, and let the old and the young, 
the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all 
sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice 
unceasingly upon its altars.” 

4. Fidelity to Civic Duty 

Service is a responsibility of citizenship. There are 
certain specific forms of service which we may pick 
out as illustrative of what I mean. 

1. Good citizens ought to be willing to accept public 
offices to which they are elected, if they feel them¬ 
selves at all qualified to hold the office. This may 
sound like a bit of whimsical humor to tell American 
youth that they should be willing to serve in public 


140 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


office, for if there is any insatiate greed characteristic 
of the typical American, it is his lust for office. Never¬ 
theless, if we could have only good citizens in every 
public office from the Presidency and the United 
States Congress to the alderman or road supervisor; if 
no man would feel that he was too big or too busy or 
too rich or too poor to serve in any capacity of public 
trust, it would be a good thing for our country. 

2. Military service is a form of public service which 
young men are sometimes called upon to render. Let 
it be said, to the everlasting glory of America, that 
with the possible exception of the War with Mexico, 
our youth have never been called upon to serve in any 
unrighteous war. I pray God that no one who reads 
this book will ever be under the necessity of defending 
our country against that form of organized insanity 
commonly called “war.” However, if the time should 
ever come when America would have to go again into 
battle for her ideals, if I had my way, every citizen of 
the republic would be drafted. The draft is the most 
democratic thing possible in such a time. It then treats 
rich and poor and high and low alike. I would have 
everybody, young and old, drafted in time of war; and 
I would put them all on a soldier's pay and in the 
service of the government. While some would be 
serving at the battle front others would be mining coal, 
or making munitions, or running the banks, or tilling 
the soil, or serving in some other capacity. Such a 
method would render impossible the repetition of the 
inglorious record which America made in the great 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


141 

World War in this respect, namely, that while four 
millions of the flower of our youth flirted with death 
on a soldier’s pay, and a hundred thousand of them 
died on the field of battle, twenty-five thousand new 
millionaires were made at home. 

But the foregoing sentiment is personal, and is not 
so fundamental as is that statement recently issued 
by the World Alliance For International Friendship 
Through the Churches, giving “The Churches’ Plea 
Against War and the War System.” This “Plea” is 
signed by one hundred and fifty-five of the best known 
and most capable religious leaders in America. There 
are only a half dozen paragraphs in their statement, 
and they so forcefully put the Christian position 
toward war that I give them here: 

“The present situation in international affairs, in¬ 
volving as it does the imminent peril of war, must 
give concern to every thoughtful Christian. After a 
devastating conflict which has cost millions of lives, 
created immeasurable hatred and piled up a debt of 
fifty dollars for every minute of time since Christ was 
born, the nations of the earth, apparently having 
learned nothing and forgotten nothing, are once more 
planning the old game of competitive imperialism and 
competitive armament. The Church of Christ was 
severely blamed for the occurrence of the last war. 
That the gospel should have been so long on earth and 
yet should have not prevented the great catastrophe 
with all its hideous cruelty and suffering was a charge 
against the church so serious that all thoughtful min- 


142 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


isters felt its force and were driven defensively to 
meet it. Even more will another war bring down 
upon the Church of Christ the charge of moral 
cowardice and fatal inefficiency. 

“Yet another war is being prepared in the vindictive 
hatreds, the nationalistic ambitions, the scheme of 
racial and imperial self-aggrandizement which mark 
the world’s international relationships. The spirit of 
good-will and sincere cooperation for the welfare of 
mankind as a whole is so lamentably weak, is so openly 
scoffed at in influential quarters, and expectations of 
war are so freely voiced and preparations for it so 
frankly pushed, that another war is inevitable unless 
a better mind can speedily prevail. 

“There are some among us, of whom the signatories 
of this appeal form a small group, who regard war as 
the most ruinous organized sin which mankind now 
faces; who are sure that the war system and the Chris¬ 
tian gospel cannot permanently abide together on the 
same earth; who see clearly that the spirit of war and 
the spirit of the gospel are antithetical, the one repre¬ 
senting what the other hates and would destroy; who 
recognize that war is futile as a means of furthering 
Christ's kingdom, even where the end sought is 
righteous and where the spirit of the combatants is 
sacrificial. 

“Our position in this appeal does not involve theo¬ 
retical pacifism; we are not concerned to deny the 
necessity of using force, massed force, it may be in an 
emergency, nor of a moderate military organization 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


143 


for defensive purposes. But the war system is not an 
appeal to force in an emergency—it is a long drawn 
out and deliberate preparation for the use of every 
know r n means of cruel and collective destruction. It 
rests upon the assumption that the welfare of one 
people involves the ruin of another and it plans far 
ahead of the event to be able to compass that ruin. It 
represents the deliberate organization of the world 
into isolated and armed peoples, suspicious of each 
other, hating each other, waiting to fall upon each 
other, instead of sanely cooperating peoples finding the 
best interests of all fulfilled in a decent, peaceable and 
reasonable fellowship. 

“We will not believe that mankind is so deficient in 
character and intelligence as to make the rational solu¬ 
tion of our international problems impossible and to 
commit us to the continued rule of insane fear, hatred 
and collective destruction. And we are certain that 
unless the Church of Christ takes now a clear and 
consistent stand on this matter of life and death to 
our civilization and to the world, she will merit the 
contempt of men and the judgment of God. 

“We therefore urge all the people of the churches, 
and all ministers in particular, to an outspoken declara¬ 
tion that the war system and the gospel of Christ are 
diametrically and irreconcilably opposed. We urge 
that without delay this crisis of decision between war 
and Christ be unmistakably recognized and stated. We 
would have every Christian church the center of a 
frank and courageous antagonism to war and every- 


144 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


thing that makes war, until in our own country and in 
all lands we succeed in reinstating Christian loyalty to 
Christ where it belongs—far above all local prejudice, 
racial hatred, and divisive nationalism. We are con¬ 
vinced that no question faces the people of God more 
crucial than this and we have thought it worth while 
to make this appeal in the hope that our conviction 
might be shared by the general body of the Church of 
Christ.” 

3. Service on the jury and on the witness stand is 
a kind of civic duty from which many good citizens 
shy away. The jury system is the result of long years 
of struggle for justice on the part of the common 
people, but unless our citizens of intelligence and of 
integrity are called to serve on the juries and cease 
begging off when they are called, the jury system is 
doomed. 

When a man takes the witness stand in a court 
trial, he is put under oath to tell the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth. Yet when one 
watches a court trial in these days he is overwhelmed 
not only at the malodorous mountain of iniquity which 
he sees, but also at the perfect carnival of perjury 
which is carried on. When a man tells a lie under oath 
he undermines the very foundation of justice. If a 
man's word under oath cannot be believed, then no 
man's reputation or property is secure. Something 
will have to be done to breed a new respect for oaths. 

4. Americans ought not to fail to perform their civic 
duty at the primaries and the general elections. In 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


145 


Pittsburgh at a recent general election, taking the com¬ 
bined votes of the two candidates for Council who 
were popularly opposed to one another, in the district 
where the most intelligent voters reside, the vote was 
eleven hundred short of the registration; while in the 
ward where the most vicious elements are to be found, 
the vote was fifty-three more than the registration. 
Every privilege implies its correlative duty. The right 
to vote or to serve at the polling place as a judge, in¬ 
spector, or watcher means that it becomes the duty of 
every citizen to vote and so to serve if he be needed. 

5. The payment of taxes is a still further civic duty 
which every citizen ought to perform. “Taxes,” says 
Professor Shenton, “are a contribution which an in¬ 
dividual or a corporation makes for the public good.” 

Any failure in obedience to the obligations of citi¬ 
zenship impairs the ability of the nation to serve the 
citizen as it should. But all such service should be in¬ 
telligent service. Justice David Brewer of the United 
States Supreme Court rightly says that “The forces 
which permeate and move the life of the nation are 
intellectual and moral.” 

5. The Divine Idea of Progress 

If America stands for anything, it certainly is the 
working out of the divine idea of progress. We have 
always believed that our government should serve the 
governed rather than that the people should serve the 
government. We have always held to the right of 
the people to determine the form of government under 


146 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


which they are to live. We have always believed that 
America stands for the right of the people to ex¬ 
periment in any way that looks to the working out of 
the divine idea of progress. This cannot be done with¬ 
out a good degree of tolerance. Intolerance is a 
strictly non-American trait, and yet it shows itself 
over and over. In the days of the Civil War whenever 
any person would get mad at another and seek to hurt 
him or to shorten his influence, he would call him a 
“Rebel” or a “Copperhead” if he lived in the North, 
and a “Yankee” if he lived in the South. During the 
great World War whenever anyone wanted to injure 
another in America he dubbed him a “German.” 
After the war was over anyone who dared to criticize 
anything that was proposed by the reactionaries was 
immediately labeled a “Radical” or a “Bolshevist.” 

Can a Radical Be a Christian? 

What is a radical? In some people’s minds a radical 
is any extremist. I heard one person declare the other 
day that “Judge Gary is a radical, because he is an ex¬ 
tremist in enforcing the will of the bosses.” There 
are some people who dub all who do not agree with 
them as radicals, and especially is that so to-day. A 
few years ago we had in America two general groups, 
standpatters and progressives. To-day, if we would 
listen to some reactionary folk, there are still only two 
groups—Americans and radicals! 

But I suppose there is a general agreement as to 
what constitutes a radical. The word itself is from the 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


147 


Latin “radicales,” which means “having roots/'* hence 
its simplest meaning as an adjective is of or pertaining 
to the root; and its first meaning as a noun is a root 
or radical part. But in politics it has come to mean 
“one who advocates sweeping changes in laws and 
methods of government with the least delay, especially 
changes deemed to tend to equalize, or to remedy 
evils arising from social conditions.” 

Now, can a Christian be a radical? Undoubtedly he 
can, if his standard is Christ, and the conditions war¬ 
rant it. John the Baptist dealt with root evils in his 
speech: “Even now the ax also lieth at the root of the 
trees: every tree therefore that bringeth not forth 
good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” 

Hippocrates, in “Aphorism,” declared that “Ex¬ 
treme remedies are very appropriate for extreme dis¬ 
eases.” And Shakespeare, in “Hamlet,” is sure that 

“Diseases desperate grown 
By desperate appliances are relieved 
Or not at all.” 

We do not doubt the Christianity of Savonarola, or 
John Huss, or Martin Luther, and yet they were rad¬ 
icals. We do not doubt the Christianity of the “In¬ 
dependents” out of which the Pilgrim Fathers came, 
and yet Macaulay says, “In politics, they were, to use 
the phrase of their time, ‘Root and Branch Men/ or, 
to use the kindred phrase of our own, ‘radicals/ ” 

The leaders of our American Revolutionary War 
were called radicals. Thus, Burke, in speaking of the 


148 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


authority of the crown of England, says: “The most 
determined exertions of that authority, against them, 
• only showed their radical independence.” Yet we do 
not call them unchristian for that reason. 

The pioneers in the movement for the abolition of 
slavery were called radicals; and, in truth, they were 
radicals; but that does not discount their Christianity. 
They fed the fires of their radical abolitionism upon 
the very spirit of Christianity. They clinched their 
arguments with Scripture. 

Likewise, the Prohibitionists have always been la¬ 
beled radicals by their opponents; and, indeed, pro¬ 
hibition has been a radical movement; it has had to 
do with the fundamental law of the land. But they 
who kept the question to the fore in the days before it 
was popular were the most earnest Christians of the 
country. 

This verdict of history makes us answer our ques¬ 
tion in the affirmative, whether we wish to or not. 
That does not say, in any sense of the word, that we 
indorse the methods of certain agitators. If the radi¬ 
cal is a person out of whose life all the fine colorings 
are gone, then, of course, he is not a Christian. It is 
sin that works itself out in constant brutalities and as¬ 
saults and murders. In the teaching of the Bible, a 
righteous man is the only real man; and if a man give 
free rein to unrighteousness, he is not particularly fit 
for the earth. 

However, some people are making radicals when 
they think they are doing the opposite. Let me illus- 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


149 


trate by a quotation from Green’s Short History of 
the English People (Vol. II, page 484): ''The steady 
opposition of the administration to any project of 
political progress created a dangerous irritation which 
brought to the front men whose demand for a ‘radical 
reform’ in English institutions, won them the name 
of Radicals, and drove more violent agitators into 
treasonable disaffection and silly plots.” 

How to Deal With the So-Called Radicals 

There are three general attitudes taken toward rad¬ 
icalism. The first is to act like the ostrich that sticks 
its head in the sand and feels secure from all danger 
because it will not see. The second is to resort to the 
policy of reaction and repression. The third thing is 
to recognize it as a present fact, and to meet it in a 
sane and constructive way. By all means, this third 
is the method which wisdom and Christianity would 
adopt. What would such a course involve? 

It would mean that we would attack causes, not 
symptoms. We ought to have better sense than to 
appeal to mob psychology. Any sincere student of 
history knows that the “red-flag” parade in the street 
is only a bubble escaping to the surface revealing some 
rottenness beneath. But if we attack the cause instead 
of the symptom, what shall our program be? 

First. We must provide better living conditions 
for the poor. Unsanitary houses and restricted op¬ 
portunities to make a life (as well as a living) breed 
discontent. 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


15 ° 

Second. The toilers must be paid the best wages 
that the business will stand. We must work for the 
most just distribution of the product of industry that 
can ultimately be devised. 

Third. We must stand for industrial democracy. 
There can be no peace in industry without justice; and 
what justice is can be determined and maintained only 
by the common consent of all concerned. 

Fourth. Workers must be protected from the hard¬ 
ships of enforced unemployment. The only property 
right which some men have is the right to work. It 
is a spiritual necessity. Surely, the nation that was 
able to pay billions of dollars to carry on our just war 
against autocracy ought to be able to provide work 
for all—if for no other reason than democracy’s sake. 

Fifth. We must stand for freedom of speech, of 
press, and of assemblage. Let the truth be told. The 
truth is essential to freedom. Driving a propagandist 
underground only makes his message seem vastly more 
important than it would seem in the open. 

Sixth. We must Americanize the foreign popula¬ 
tion. Nearly every man in the '‘red-flag” parade in 
Cleveland on a recent May Day was a foreigner. Some 
people who have come to our country from Russia, 
Germany, Austria, and other autocratic countries of 
yester-year, feel themselves rebels against all govern¬ 
ment. They must be taught what America really is. 
They must be taught the truth about Bolshevism, how 
instead of wiping out class distinction, it has made 
class division more rigid and enduring than ever—it 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


151 

is class rule with a vengeance! Bolshevism is the 
arch crime against democracy. Just at the time that 
Russia had achieved suffrage that was equal, direct, 
universal and secret, Bolshevism came along and killed 
the new-found freedom. It is nothing more or less 
than inverted Czarism. It instituted a reign of ter¬ 
ror. Industrial dictatorship desires neither peace nor 
democracy, but power. It seeks to set up a rule of two 
hundred thousand workers over one hundred and 
eighty millions of people. 

We must acquaint the foreigner with the genius of 
America. 

What is the Genius of America? 

In his essay on “The Philosophy of History,” Ed¬ 
ward P. Powell tells how he received a letter shortly 
before the anarchistic uprising in Chicago from a 
young man who said: “I hope I live to shoot the 
judge, and avenge the death of those martyrs. I hate 
the flag and the laws that tolerate such tyranny.” To 
which Doctor Powell replied: “You are making a 
mistake. Study American history. It is your only 
antidote. Go back to John Adams and to Thomas Jef¬ 
ferson, and learn why our institutions are what they 
are, and the toilsome evolution of ages that crowns 
itself with our Federal Union.” Some time later Doc¬ 
tor Powell received a letter from the young man in 
which he said: “I have taken your advice; and now 
my wonder is that Americans dare let their children 
grow up without a more thorough understanding of 




THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


their political and institutional life. I am now ready 
to die to sustain this marvelous fabric.” History 
saved that young man. 

But what is the element that gives permanency and 
worth-whileness to American democracy? What is 
it that keeps our democracy safe? Let us turn to his¬ 
tory to see, for it is no less important that democracy 
shall be kept safe for the world, than that the world 
shall be kept safe for democracy. 

The corner stone of American democracy was laid 
by the Pilgrim Fathers in the cabin of the Mayflower 
as it was tossed by the wild waves off Cape Cod, when 
they drew up the compact by which they were to gov¬ 
ern themselves, and the very opening words of that 
compact were these: “In the Name of God.” You 
find the same principle illustrated a little later, when the 
Declaration of Independence was drawn up, and that 
immortal Declaration closes with an appeal to Provi¬ 
dence to safeguard the divine rights therein set forth. 
You find it illustrated again in the gloomy winter of 
1777, when the American Army was in winter quar¬ 
ters at Valley Forge; and one morning a farmer was 
going along the road and heard a voice in prayer. 
He pushed the bushes aside, and looking in, beheld a 
tall, stalwart man upon his knees in prayer, his face 
upraised to the pitying heavens as he pleaded for the 
success of the American cause. And who was that 
man? He was, with one single exception, the richest 
man in the colonies at the time of the Revolution. He 
might have gone to England and been lionized and 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


153 


feted. He had absolutely nothing to gain and every¬ 
thing to lose by espousing the uncertain cause of the 
colonies—and yet he became the leader of their armies. 
He served them all the awful years of that war without 
receiving a single cent of pay for himself; and a part 
of the time paid the ragged American soldiers out of 
his own purse. He loved his home upon the banks of 
the calmly gliding Potomac, and yet during all the 
years of that fratricidal struggle he spent only two 
hours at home. He, the commander-in-chief of the 
American army, the first President of the mightiest 
republic that the sun ever shone upon, the Father of 
his Country, was upon his knees in the snow beseech¬ 
ing Almighty God in behalf of his stricken country. 
The same truth is illustrated in the Constitutional 
Convention: it seemed absolutely impossible for the 
delegates to come to an agreement. Then Benjamin 
Franklin said that he could see no hope save from 
heaven, and he moved that the Convention should open 
its sessions with prayer. 

You find it illustrated again in the words of that 
mountain-minded man, Daniel Webster, who declared: 
“Public morality must restrain ambitious men. But 
morality rests on religion. If you destroy the founda¬ 
tion, the superstructure must fall.” You find it il¬ 
lustrated again in the words of “Old Hickory,” An¬ 
drew Jackson, when he said, “The Bible is the rock 
upon which our republic rests.” You find it illus¬ 
trated still further in the words of the mighty soldier- 
statesman, Ulysses S. Grant: “The Bible is the sheet- 


154 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


anchor of our liberties.” A still further illustration 
of this principle is found in the words of the immortal 
Lincoln. When some one asked him what had 
prompted him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation 
just at the time he did he replied: “I promised Al¬ 
mighty God on my knees that if General Lee were 
driven back, I would celebrate the event by setting the 
slaves free.” 

America has just as truly a Messianic mission to 
the world as had the Israelites of old. 

The special mission of America is this: to furnish 
hospice for freedom; to guard the idea of liberty as 
the never-sleeping dragon of mythology guarded the 
gardens of the Hesperides. And if America is the 
Messiah of Nations, it is under divine compulsion to 
make the world safe for democracy, and to keep democ¬ 
racy safe for the world. 

Religion is the foundation of democracy, and is es¬ 
sential to its continued existence. Democracy is a 
spirit, and not merely a form of government. Democ¬ 
racy finds its sanction in the nature of man. Man was 
meant to be free. Democracy is a state of society in 
which government is dedicated to the service of human 
need and has for its supreme aim the furtherance of 
human progress. Socrates called morality the art of 
self-possession and self-government. The one funda¬ 
mental virtue, he taught, was “rule over oneself.” 
Any people’s rule over itself is never safe unless there 
be intelligence, morality, and a great faith in God. 

It is no idle question to ask whether mass govern- 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


155 


ment, with its heedlessness, wastefulness, incoherence, 
and absence of foresight, can actually maintain itself 
and go on as a conquering world force. One thing is 
absolutely certain, it cannot be done unless the people 
are taught a love for work, and develop a capacity for 
useful service, unless we maintain moral homes, un¬ 
less the patriotic school is kept alive, unless the church 
continue to be the shaping and molding influence in our 
national life. 

Religion must put on a program of justice and fra¬ 
ternity among races, nations, and classes, and in social 
life generally. Democracy, to be safe, must be spirit¬ 
ual. The future of democracy depends absolutely upon 
the social and political education of the masses of the 
people. It depends upon social sympathy and good 
will. Deadly foes of democracy are luxury of wealth, 
industrial and group selfishness, intolerance, and the 
notion that physical science has given its verdict in 
favor of violence and against social justice. 

The American Youth a Citizen of the World 

America is at the threshold of her supreme destiny 
in the world. She is still in a state of transition, watch¬ 
ing, studying, thinking, feeling, and talking herself 
into convictions which will alter the fate of the world. 

The youth of America dream dreams. Do they not 
dream of an ideal state of society? What would be 
an ideal state of society? Let me offer my conception 
of it. 

It would be one: 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


156 

Where the Golden Rule would be the rule of all 
conduct. 

Where the Beatitudes would reveal the attitude in 
which all people should be found. 

Where the Sermon on the Mount would be the 
Magna Charta of the nation’s life, and the spirit of 
the good Samaritan would be the interpreter of inter¬ 
national law. 

Where industry would be maintained in peace by the 
method of industrial comradeship and cooperative in¬ 
telligence. 

Where all men would do justly, and love kindness 
and walk humbly with God. 

Where famine, gaunt want, the pinch of poverty, 
the corroding fret of the underfed would be unknown. 

Where the cause of poverty, whether it be sin, in¬ 
dolence, unemployment, inefficiency, or the unjust dis¬ 
tribution of the product of industry, would be done 
away. 

Where commerce in vice would be suppressed ab¬ 
solutely by due enforcement of adequate law, and 
where the immoral inclinations and purposes in the 
human heart would be overcome by the individual’s 
prostration of himself before God, from whom he 
would receive the new nature. 

Where truth would not be tampered with in science, 
letters, art, politics, religion, and where no man or set 
of men would defile it by interpreting it for selfish ends. 

Where Christ's standard of greatness would be the 
accepted and universal standard, namely, the greatest 


YOUTH AND CITIZENSHIP 


157 

person in the community is the one who renders the 
greatest service to mankind. 

Where the sacredness of life would be fervently 
held to, and every man would look upon his fellow man 
as a divine creature of the Divine, whose death is as 
solemn as the unveiling of unknown and unending 
destinies. 

Where housing conditions would be such as to make 
the best home life possible. 

Where children would be cared for as the material 
out of which the kingdom of God is built. 

Where divorce would be viewed as an awful kind of 
vivisection, a ruthless mangling of soul and body, 
tragic, cruel, pitiful. 

Where the rightly ordered home life would become 
an oratorio, singing melodies and harmonies of fireside 
devotion and mutual service, sacrifice, and sympathy. 

Where every drinking club and fly-by-night speak¬ 
easy and “whiteline” and “dope” joint where alcohol 
and drugs are obtained would be driven into oblivion, 
where they belong. 

Where the whole life of the community—religious, 
moral, social, recreation, physical and economic— 
would be interpreted in terms of the Eternal. 

Where each individual by accepting Christ would 
experience that thorough, conscious, personal conver¬ 
sion whereby God comes into control of one’s life; 
and, in accepting Christ, would accept all the impli¬ 
cations of the program of Christianity, both as to bulk 
and to complex relationship. 


CHAPTER VI 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 

Many young people forsake the church entirely. 
Others, even though they be members of the church, 
often become so indifferent toward it that they might 
just as well get out. The reason for this is not because 
religion is unattractive to them, but because it seems 
unreal. All red-blooded young people love reality, but 
they despise sham. Sham is too closely related to 
shame for them to become very enthusiastic over it. 
Deception, fraud, pretense is only sham so long as it 
is not found out; but just as soon as it is found out it 
becomes a shame. 

How much of sham there is in life! Sham oak 
and mahogany; sham diamonds and pearls; sham stone 
walls and slate roofs; sham hair and complexion; 
sham honor and virtue! And just as soon as the sham 
is found out it becomes a shame. Then, oh how the 
cheeks flame when no one is near to see! 

The sense of shame grows keener at the detection 
of deception as the matter involved rises in the scale 
of importance. In matters of minor importance the 
conscience may make the deceiver uncomfortable by 
its inaudible accusing voice. But in some matter of 
grave concern the outraged conscience becomes, as 

158 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


159 

Luther would say, a yelping hell-hound, a raging fury, 
a tormenting devil, a monster vomiting fire! 

Therefore people are much less likely to practice 
sham on the higher levels of life than on the lower. 
The highest, holiest thought conceivable is that of 
man’s relationship to God. In spite of what the critics 
of the church say, there are not very many conscious 
and deliberate hypocrites in the church. The more 
worth-while a person is, the more determined he is that 
he will not practice sham in religion. 

Now, there are many fine young men and young 
women in whom the religious instinct is thoroughly 
alive, who honestly desire to give themselves to God 
and to do his will, but who are led to believe that 
their religious life must take the same expressional 
forms as those of older people. It is not necessary to 
particularize. Each one’s memory can furnish out of 
his own experience and observation too many illustra¬ 
tions of what I mean. How often some austere official, 
some sincere but misguided man, or some pious woman 
out of touch with youth, has driven the young people 
away from the church by a harsh, critical or unsym¬ 
pathetic attitude toward the young people merely be¬ 
cause they did not express their religious life in the 
same form as the older person did. 

This is true in the devotional life: in Christian testi¬ 
mony, in prayer, in intellectual attitude toward the 
Bible, in methods of evangelism, and in all forms of 
public and private worship; and it is true in the realm 
of recreation and culture; in the amusement ques- 


160 THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 

tion, new and old; in the fields of drama, music and 
art. 

It is true in the outreaching life of service: in every 
form of missionary work, of the dissemination of mis¬ 
sionary information, of methods of church finance, of 
forms of community service; of a Christian’s rela¬ 
tions to all our complex social, industrial, economic, 
and political life. 

How condemnatory some people are of the modern 
church’s program of social service! “The church has 
no business to meddle in the affairs of industry and 
of politics,” they say. Others frown with disapproval 
upon hikes and parties and games and refreshments 
and the whole play life generally, declaring that if a 
person were a Christian, he would not lust after these 
Egyptian flesh pots of the worldly life. Others scorn¬ 
fully discredit all new methods of evangelism. “The 
Old-Time Religion” is their favorite hymn. To such 
people “the old time religion” generally means the 
particular form and interpretation of religion which 
they have adopted for themselves. “All you need do,” 
they declare, “is to preach the simple gospel.” And by 
preaching the gospel they usually mean the repetition 
of platitudes in the pious phrases with which they are 
most familiar. 


A Passion for Reality 

Much harm has been wrought by a few critical peo¬ 
ple out of touch with the spirit of youth and unable 
to adjust themselves to new conditions. To insist 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


161 


upon making a young Christian think and feel and 
talk and act like an old Christian is just as foolish as 
to try to make a radiant young person talk and walk 
and look like an old person. If you insisted upon 
pulling the teeth of a vigorous youth and putting into 
his mouth the false teeth of an old man, of pulling 
out the youth’s hair and putting on his head an old 
man’s wig, of stiffening the youth’s joints so that he 
would have to walk with a crook and limp like an old 
man, of taking away from the youth his nifty new 
clothes and putting on him an old man’s somber suit— 
if you attempted to do that sort of thing, there would 
likely be some opposition from the vigorous youth! 

Even so, young people resent the implication that 
their religious life should express itself in all of its 
many forms in the same identical way as the religious 
life of old people expresses itself. Times change. 
Some people don’t. Peter Cartwright was of the 
opinion that as soon as an organ (a “wooden god,” 
as he called it) was brought into a church the true 
God went out. He was not alone in this notion. I 
remember a “hired man” on my father’s farm when I 
was a boy who declared that he believed “the only 
difference between a fiddle and the devil is that you 
can see one and can’t see the other!” Yet to-day all 
Christians rejoice that we have the organ and the 
violin to aid us in the worship of Almighty God. They 
are not new now. We have gotten used to them. I know 
a fine old saint who is always glad to have stere- 
opticon slides (“still pictures,” she calls them) shown 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


162 

in the church, but who feels that the place has been 
desecrated if motion pictures are shown. What is 
the difference? It is not that one stands still and the 
other moves. It is that she is used to the one and not 
to the other. There are some people so constituted 
that anything that is old is proper, while anything that 
is new is taboo. Such people have cost the church a 
lot of fine young men and women. 

But by no means has all of the loss, or most of it, 
resulted from the intolerance of misguided and unsym¬ 
pathetic old people. Most young folks who have 
dropped out of the life of the church have done so be¬ 
cause they felt that the whole thing was an empty 
sham, an idle mockery, something unreal. The reason 
why it seemed unreal was because much of the expres- 
sional life held up to them as the proper form was un¬ 
natural to the spirit of youth, and hence unreal. A 
glowing fire is warmer than a snowdrift. Therefore 
when young people have been out playing in the snow 
until they are almost frozen they come naturally to 
the fire, and it warms them and cheers them, and they 
love it. It is real. But a painted picture of the fire is 
no warmer than the snowdrift. Hence young people, 
cold with playing in the snow, do not sit down before 
a picture of the fire to warm themselves. To do so 
would be unnatural, unreal, very foolish. 

A passion for reality is one of the most sovereign 
traits of normal youth. In quest of reality they some¬ 
times go to ridiculous lengths. The flapper is a young 
bird that is growing impatient with the nest, and so 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


163 


it flaps its wings to see if they be strong enough for it 
to venture out upon the world alone. The flapper is 
the slang name of a young woman in whom the pas¬ 
sion for reality takes the form of protest against the 
conventional, and in order to demonstrate it to herself 
and to others she goes to wild excesses of dress. In 
her unanalyzed fight against sham she even practices 
sham. That is why she is ashamed of her doings when 
she “comes to herself.” 

But the point is, that to make religion permanently 
attractive to young people it must be wrapped round 
and round with the atmosphere of perfect reality. 

Beginning the Christian Life: Repentance 

We are not specially concerned about words and 
phrases. Christianity is more a matter of life than 
of mere intellectual assent to some creed. Neverthe¬ 
less, in becoming a Christian certain things happen, 
no matter what names we give to those things. 

The door to the Christian life has traditionally been 
known as repentance. Familiarity with the sound of 
the word should not blunt the meaning of it, for it 
describes a very real attitude of mind. It is not sor¬ 
row only, though bitter sorrow naturally seizes one 
who recognizes himself as a sinner against God. It is 
not fear only, though a sense of sin naturally awakens 
an expectation of punishment. The wise man said: 
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” Naturally; 
for they know they ought to be pursued, and therefore 
every rustling leaf becomes a pursuing avenger. Every 


164 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


unusual noise is the earnest of impending judgment. 
They are afraid of some lower depth, some keener bite, 
some more painful sting, some hotter hell. Every 
sting of a protesting conscience is but a hint of the 
still greater punishment that awaits them when all life 
is looked at by a judicial eye and pronounced upon by 
a judicial voice. 

But repentance is more than sorrow alone, or fear 
alone. The best picture of repentance ever presented 
is the story of the prodigal son: he awakened to a 
sense of his need. He had an apprehension of a better 
life with his father. He voluntarily abandoned the life 
he had been living. He demonstrated his faith by 
arising and going to his father. He confessed his 
personal guilt and helplessness. He pledged obedience 
to his father’s will, and asked only a chance to serve. 
Repentance is a new attitude of mind, a new setting of 
the intellect, affections and will. 

Conversion Is a Change of Center 

Life is one thing; its outward manifestation is an¬ 
other. Life is ever the same; its outward manifesta¬ 
tions are as diversified as the tints of the flower or the 
leaves of the forest or the different expressions of 
the human countenance. What life is we know not. 
Some of the things it does are not familiar to us. The 
life in the seed will, under favorable conditions, cull 
material from the soil, air, and water, and lift it up 
into a tall pine, a sturdy oak or a beautiful flower, ac¬ 
cording as the life force was secreted in the seed of 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


165 

pine, oak, or flower. It is even so with the new life 
in Christ Jesus: it is ever the same; but its outward 
manifestations will differ according to the varying 
emotional and intellectual make-up of different indi¬ 
viduals. 

Creeds have their value, and a conscious experi¬ 
mental conversion is a good thing; but these are not 
the only or the chief marks of conversion. The im¬ 
portant question is: Has there been a change of center? 
Has the soul ceased to be self-centered, and become 
God-centered and other-centered ? 

It is not the truth we admit that is important; it is 
the truth we cannot get along without. Our chief sin 
is that we treat God as if he were a figure of speech. 
If God were taken out of our life for one day, would 
we be so lonely that we could not live? After all, 
the only thing under heaven that is really important is 
what we think about God. 

Intellectual Difficulties 

To be God-centered holds us steady while we wade 
through our intellectual difficulties. For several 
winters I have been conducting on Sunday nights what 
I call “Question Drawer Discussions.” Many ques¬ 
tions are submitted to me each week. I have had a 
chance to prove that adolescence is indeed the time of 
questioning. I have been often struck with the aston¬ 
ishing and unjustifiable conceit with which time- 
honored maxims of the race are caustically criticized. 
Yet I have been sympathetic with it all, for I have 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


166 

learned that, though he may not be conscious of it, 
the normal youth hungers for God as he hungers for 
knowledge, love, and comradeship. 

I have learned that the largest service I can render 
a skeptical youth is to lead him to a conscious adjust¬ 
ment of himself to the will of God. This furnishes a 
place for his fledgling reason to light when it attempts 
to try its wings and acquire the art of flight. 

For instance, a good many young people imagine 
that if one accepts the hypothesis of evolution by 
so doing he conducts God to the frontier of thought 
and bows him out with thanks for the service he 
rendered an earlier age and a simpler folk. Nothing 
could be sillier. When people talk about the laws of 
nature and about what evolution has done, they usually 
spell nature with a capital “N” and evolution with a 
capital “E.” As a matter of fact, evolution does noth¬ 
ing. Evolution is only a name for an orderly process 
in nature, and the “laws of nature” are not self- 
existent entities. “The laws of nature” are simply 
God’s thought. When it came to making a universe, 
God had two methods by which he might proceed. He 
might have worked upon it with material from the 
outside as a carpenter makes a box, or he might have 
worked from the inside in an orderly development 
and growth. As a matter of fact, it seems as though 
he had chosen the latter method. The name which 
scientists give to this method is evolution. To my 
mind it is more wonderful and sublime than the car¬ 
pentry method. The laws of nature are God’s thoughts 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


167 


of an orderly universe, and, again, to my mind, this 
is infinitely to be preferred to a universe of caprice. 

Transforming Doctrines Into Experience 

Obedience to the commonplace conditions of the 
moral life is an important “exercise” for those who 
would have a “good conscience, void of offense toward 
God and toward men.” Once Jesus said: “Blessed are 
the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” That is the 
most stupendous proposition that ever fell from speak¬ 
ing lips. Unsustained by any argument, as though it 
were a self-evident truth, Jesus announces that heart 
purity clarifies a man’s creed; that holy living leads 
to the knowledge of God. What a word that is to 
drop into the midst of the conflicting theologies and 
philosophies of this day. The preacher who would be 
profound must be pure. The man who would have 
spiritual insight must live the perfectly consecrated 
life. 

This is the only way in which God can be received 
into the soul. Once Jesus told questioning Jews that 
if they would know the source of his teaching, they 
must be willing to do the will of God. David asks 
and answers a question of spiritual citizenship after 
this fashion: 

“Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah? 

And who shall stand in His holy place? 

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; 

Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity. 

And hath not sworn deceitfully.” 


168 THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 

Thus the great doctrines of religion become facts 
of religious experience. The man who lives on the 
outside, searching for God by the light of his glow¬ 
worm philosophy, will not see him. He must needs 
have his heart lighted by the Sun of righteousness, 
even as the little dewdrop gathers within itself the 
light of the great orb of day. The man of impure 
heart does not understand spiritual language: it is a 
foreign tongue to him. But the pure heart is a 
burnished mirror, reflecting the image of God. True 
seeing is the unfailing reward of true living. 

Conscience must be purified if it is to be without 
offense. The great William E. Gladstone in his Plum- 
stead speech said, “The disease of an evil conscience 
is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the 
countries in the world.” When Macbeth called upon 
the physician to cure his wife of her evil conscience, 
to 

“Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff 
Which weighs upon the heart,” 

the physician wisely replied, “More need has she of 
the Divine than of the human.” He was right. No 
“sweet oblivious antidote” can cleanse the evil con¬ 
science. Time cannot heal our sins. Forgetfulness 
cannot wipe out our iniquity. Let age upon age roll 
by, and man’s sin will still confront him, scourge him, 
and defy him to enjoy one moment of peace. What, 
then, shall a man do whose yesterdays conspire to con¬ 
demn him for a sinner before God ? “Let the wicked 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


169 


forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; 
and let him return unto Jehovah, and he will have 
mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abun¬ 
dantly pardon.” “How much more shall the blood of 
Christ purge your conscience from dead works to serve 
the living God.” 

Appeal to Youth 

There is no reason why a young person should not 
become a Christian. There are many reasons why he 
should. Just two of these reasons need to be named 
here. 

First. Statistics prove that youthhood is the most 
likely time for acceptance of Christ and his Way of 
Life. If you should select any group of Christians 
promiscuously assembled, and take a poll of the age at 
which they became Christians, you would find that by 
far the largest number of them decided for Christ 
when between fourteen and eighteen years of age, and 
that relatively few made the great decision after reach¬ 
ing twenty-five or thirty years of age. In other words, 
if you should represent the probable age of deciding 
for Christ by a line, rising or falling according to the 
most susceptible ages, you would find it gradually 
rising from about eight years of age to thirteen, then 
a sudden rise to a sharp peak at sixteen or seventeen 
years of age, then a rapid decline to twenty-five, a 
gradual decline to thirty or thirty-one, and then a 
flattening out with each succeeding decade. It seems 
if a person allows the plastic period of youth, the 


170 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


germinating time of the great social emotions and 
activities, to pass without accepting Christ, that by his 
repeated persistent refusals he brings himself into such 
an attitude of mind, such a condition of soul, that his 
yielding becomes less and less likely with every pass¬ 
ing year. That is, if the capacity to receive God is 
not aroused and given some development during 
adolescence, it tends to atrophy. 

Second. An early decision means just so many 
more years of Christian service. Of course no one 
knows how long any individual will live, but we do 
know from a study of life insurance actuaries tables 
the length of life that may be expected to follow any 
given age. That is only another way of saying that 
we know the probable years of usefulness that remain 
for any one accepting Christ at any particular age. 
Thus it has been discovered that the person who ac¬ 
cepts Christ at ten years of age may be expected to 
have 48.36 years of service; at fifteen, 44.96; at 
twenty, 41.49; at twenty-five, 37.98; at thirty, 34.43; 
at thirty-five, 30.87; at forty, 27.28; at forty-five, 
23.59; at fifty, 20.18; at fifty-five, 18.85; at sixty, 
13.77; at sixty-five, 10.97; at seventy, 8.54; at seventy- 
five, 6.48; at eighty, 4.78. 

A study of these figures ought to bring the youth 
of America, without a single exception, to an im¬ 
mediate acceptance of Jesus Christ; for the youth of 
America are idealists. They want to serve. They 
cannot live the complete life or the most useful life 
without God. 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


171 


Join the Church 

Anybody who is ambitious to live the most worth¬ 
while life will become a member of the church. A 
Christian life begun is one thing; a Christian life main¬ 
tained is another. We are not only to be good; we 
are to be good for something. We are not only 
to “cast off the works of darkness”; we are to “put 
on the armor of light,” which means that we are to 
be panoplied for Christian warfare. If we love Christ, 
we will keep His Commandments. 

No Christian should be so presumptuous as to 
imagine that he may map out a course of conduct for 
himself which would not be a proper course of conduct 
for all Christians to follow. It is conceivable that a 
person might be a Christian and not be a member of 
the church; but it is a dead certainty that no one can 
be as good a Christian outside the church as he could 
be inside the church. The church is a necessity to the 
Christian for his own proper development, and it is a 
necessity for the saving of society. Though there has 
been a seepage and flow of the spirit of Christianity 
through the fissures and conduits of society which is 
beyond charting or measurement, yet the church is the 
one organism in the world which has stood for the 
perpetuation of the influence of Christ. The person 
and teaching of Jesus are the great reservoir of life- 
giving water, and the church is a system of pipes and 
sluices distributing its flow among the arid wastes of 
humanity, and wherever it has been carried the desert 


172 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


has been made to blossom as the rose, and stunted 
growth has been coaxed into flower and fruitage. 

Loyalty to the Church the Highest Patriotism 

The young Christian who starts out supremely loyal 
to the church and remains loyal to it, will be worth 
far more than the one whose chief pastime is to 
“knock” the church. Just as our star-spangled banner 
stands for the government of the United States of 
America wherever it is flung to the breeze, so the 
church stands for the government of God in the world 
of men. When I was with our army in France during 
the Great War I remember on July 4, 1918, at Chau- 
mont, which was General Pershing’s headquarters, a 
great military parade was held. I was standing along 
the side of the street with other American soldiers, 
and with the civilian population of the town. Diag¬ 
onally across the street from where I stood was the 
reviewing stand upon which were General Pershing 
and others high in command both among the French 
and British. A regiment of American soldiers, most 
of whom were from Kansas, who had been trained at 
Camp Funston under General Leonard Wood, came 
marching down the street with the expansive swing 
of conquerors. How fine they looked! They were 
tall and straight and clear-eyed and forward-looking. 
They marched with so fine a precision that if one 
closed his eyes he could imagine that one monstrous 
man was striding along the street, grinding the gravel 
beneath his mighty feet. 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


*73 


They were led by the band, playing that most popu¬ 
lar of all the war airs: “Over There! Over There!” 
And it came out with a whip-crack at the end: “And 
we won’t come back ’til it’s over over there!” Then 
was borne along the American flag. I have never been 
accused of being overly sentimental, or of being the 
victim of an overplus of emotionalism, yet when that 
flag came along, something happened to my eyes. I 
might have reasoned out that it was merely a piece 
of silk that once had lain on the floor of a warehouse. 
I might have said that the combination of the red, 
white, and blue made the most artistic flag that ever 
floated in the air. But instead of coldly reasoning 
about it, I looked upon it and loved it and saluted it. 
When that “something” happened to my eyes which 
made me ashamed of myself, I looked out of the comer 
of one eye and saw a big raw-boned “Yank” sniffling 
like a baby, and I looked out of the comer of the other 
eye and saw another Yankee “dough-boy” vociferously 
blowing his nose on his khaki handerkerchief. What 
had happened ? Only this: they saw in the flag what 
I saw. And I saw more than the little white stars in 
their field of blue, laughing down their delightful light 
over the crowd, and I saw more than the stripes 
stroked in ripples of white and red. In the glorious 
folds of that banner I saw America; I saw America’s 
“purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain”; 
I saw America’s factories, whose smokestacks poured 
forth their tawny stream of smoke like muddy rivers 
into the clear blue sea of heaven; I saw America’s 


174 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


homes, schools, and churches; I saw the faces of my 
loved ones. For the flag stood for America. 

In very much the same way, in a very real sense, 
the church stands for the government of God in the 
world. The person who despises the flag is not a very 
patriotic American, and the person who treats the 
church with contempt is not a very good Christian. 

Public Worship Essential 

Public worship is essential to our spiritual welfare. 
We are social creatures. The person who lives in 
isolation becomes “queer.” The person who does not 
avail himself of the opportunity of social worship de¬ 
velops a queer sort of religion. It is doubtful if Chris¬ 
tianity could have survived as a world force on private 
worship alone. It is a scientific fact that all pre¬ 
historic animals that equipped themselves with coats 
of mail and lived apart from their fellows have 
perished from the earth, while those who learned to 
cooperate, like the horse and the dog, have survived. 
Not contrariwise, the survival of any religion depends 
in large measure upon the social instinct. 

Private Worship Essential Also 

Important as public worship is, it is doubtful if any¬ 
one can long survive as a Christian who does not find 
some time to be alone with God. We are all in dread¬ 
ful peril of becoming victims of the fallacy of the 
distant. One of the hardest lessons for us to learn is 
the geography of worship. We are all more or less 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


175 


prone to imagine that some mountain is the sacred 
mountain, that some land is the Holy Land, that some 
city is the city of God. The woman at the well was 
only voicing a universal human instinct when she in¬ 
quired of Jesus where was the proper place to worship 
God. He replied that it was not only not any particu¬ 
lar mountain or city, but that they who worship God 
must worship in spirit and in truth. There is an invisi¬ 
ble temple. That temple is wherever a heart turns 
itself toward God in true spiritual worship. 

Every minister of as much as five years’ experience 
has had his heart broken more than once in seeing 
people who have accepted the Christian life grow in¬ 
different, and finally fall away. Often the main cause 
and always a contributing cause of backsliding is 
neglect of private worship. 

Meditation 

Meditation is to our reading what digestion and 
assimilation are to our food. Meditation means that 
we resolve the great truths of religion in our mind, 
that we give serious thought to our relationship to our 
God and our fellows. It is our right and our duty 
to examine ourselves. The person who never takes 
inventory of his spiritual stock in trade is headed 
straight for bankruptcy. 

Bible Study 

There are two kinds of study which every young 
Christian ought to pursue with respect to the Bible. 


176 THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 

First. He ought to study it more or less critically, 
seeking to know the authors of the different books of 
the Bible, the conditions of the times out of which they 
came, the terms of thought of the people when they 
were written, and all other things which go to make 
up a knowledge of the Bible as a progressive revela¬ 
tion. Such a study takes the Bible out of the super¬ 
stitious vagueness and unreality into which it has 
fallen with too many people, and sets it forth as a 
book dealing with everyday realities for real people. 
It gives the student a “reason for the faith that is 
within” him. It prepares him to withstand the on¬ 
slaught of the shallow-pated skeptic who, by jibes and 
ridicule, seeks to destroy the Christian’s faith in the 
Bible as the Word of God. It frankly teaches that 
the Bible is not a textbook of science, and was never 
intended to be such. It shows that the Bible is not a 
perfect utterance; but it is a perfect revelation contain¬ 
ing a message which men can seize and which gives to 
them the most knowledge of God and his will that they 
are capable of receiving at any time, and hence a grow¬ 
ing revelation with the growth of men, leading them 
toward ever-enlarging conceptions of God and his 
character and his goal for the world. 

In the second place, the young Christian ought to 
study the Bible devotionally, letting the Bible speak to 
his heart, discovering to him the vast stores of spiritual 
goodness which we have not yet attained, thus causing 
him to “hunger and thirst after goodness”; refining his 
judgment, cleansing his imagination, clarifying his 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


U7 


reasoning, quickening his conscience, strengthening his 
will, winging his faith, and toning up his life for 
decent conduct and holy living. 

Prayer 

Public prayer is important; but not more so than 
private prayer. “Enter into thine inner chamber,” 
said Jesus, “and having shut thy door, pray to thy 
Father.” 

Prayer is the universal element in religion. Some¬ 
times it is petition, asking for particular things. Some¬ 
times it is intercession, praying definitely for others. 
Sometimes it is communion with God, when the one 
who prays enters into the Father’s presence and tarries 
there in conversation, repentance, adoration, love, and 
worship. And sometimes it is empty formalism, like 
the prayer of the Pharisee in the Saviour’s parable. 

Private prayer is a scene on which angels must look 
with delight. What a scene it is! One human being 
kneeling before the Great I Am! Being alone, there 
will be no temptation to become stilted and formal, or 
to pay any attention to phraseology. Being alone, 
he will not be so likely to pray by rote, as do some 
whose prayers go round and round, and get no further 
than the “prayer-wheels” of certain Russians. Being 
alone, he can confess his sins; he can talk straight out 
to God, and he can listen to what God has to say to 
him. Having some time alone for prayer each day, 
coupled to meditation and the reading of the Scripture, 
tends to make one not only sincere, but also unselfish 


1 7 8 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


in his praying. He learns what it means to pray “in 
the Name” of Jesus: that it is not a tacking on of the 
name of Jesus at the end of our prayers as a bit of 
ritual, but, rather, a whole-hearted living of the Christ- 
life. 

“Prayer is the wish of the heart,” was the defini¬ 
tion of a deaf and dumb man. Prayer, in the spirit 
of Christ, is the soul’s hunger and thirst after good¬ 
ness. And we will not forget that the soul can have 
what it wants. Prayer is the putting of ourselves 
under the influence of God. By prayer we make use of 
God. 


Individual Salvation Not Enough 

We believe in that least outworn of all religious 
experiences, a thorough, conscious, personal conver¬ 
sion, whereby God comes into control of one’s life. 
But let us insist that when a man accepts Christ he 
accepts all the implications of the program of Chris¬ 
tianity, both as to bulk and to complex relationship. 
He must offer himself as the bond-servant of Jesus 
Christ for the service of common life. Whatever 
else you may call it, that which begins and ends with 
a mere subjective experience is not worthy of the 
sacred name of Christian. 

Builders of the Kingdom 

A Christian must adopt Christ’s program as his 
own. The social ideal of Jesus is summed up in that 
phrase which he used over and over again: “The king- 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


179 


dom of heaven,” or “the kingdom of God/’ His first 
preaching was an announcement of the nearness of 
the Kingdom. His last interview with his disciples on 
Passion eve glowed with the anticipation of union with 
them in the Kingdom. All the way in between his 
first sermon and his last conversation, he was talking 
about the kingdom of God. Mark records thirteen 
instances of Christ's use of the term; Luke, thirty- 
four; Matthew, forty-eight. And when his disciples 
besought him to teach them to pray, the brief model 
he gave them contained a petition for the coming of 
the Kingdom: “Our Father, thy kingdom come. Thy 
will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” 

The fundamental thought of the term “the kingdom 
of God,” is interpreted by “Thy will be done.” It is 
as though when Jesus taught us to pray “Thy kingdom 
come,” he feared we might misunderstand, and so he 
hastened on to explain it, to interpret it, by adding the 
petition, “Thy will be done as in heaven, so on earth.” 
Hence, the fundamental idea of the “kingdom of 
heaven” is the rule of God. 

Christ's countrymen were always thinking of the 
kingdom of God; Christ was always thinking of the 
kingdom of God. They were thinking of an external 
pomp; he, of the doing of the will of God. The 
Kingdom of which Jesus talked was not a transient 
fabrication, not a subordinate arrangement, not a hu¬ 
man ambition. It was the kingdom of God . There¬ 
fore, when in the spirit of Jesus, we pray, “Thy king¬ 
dom come,” we do not pray that some great square 


i8o 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


figure shall fall out of the heavens ready-made to fit 
a materialistic age. We do not pray for a sudden 
shift in dispensations and for a Kingdom to be super¬ 
imposed upon us by a stupendous apocalyptic event. 
We pray, rather, for the domination of ideas, pur¬ 
poses, and intentions of the most lofty and sacred 
sort. “He rules the world by truth and grace/' 

Personal Evangelism 

The builder of the kingdom of God on earth will 
seize every opportunity to present the claims of Christ 
to those nearest to him. If the Protestant position be 
true that no priest can come between man and God 
and between man and Truth, then it logically follows 
that no one can come between man and his fellow man. 
That is, no man can shift to another his responsibility 
for saving his fellow man. If we cannot pay some 
priest to do our praying and Bible-studying for us, 
neither can we pay some evangelist or preacher to do 
our evangelistic work for us. 

The chief reason for the wide and rapid spread 
of the Christian religion, says Gibbon the historian, 
was because “it became the most sacred duty of a new 
convert to diffuse among his friends the inestimable 
blessing which he had received." 

The duty of personal work for souls is more im¬ 
perious upon the Christian to-day than ever before, for 
the side attractions of automobile and movie and radio 
and every form of worldliness make it almost impos- 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 181 

sible to get the common crowd to attend a revival 
meeting. 

Charity and Justice 

The builders of tire kingdom of God on earth will 
give hands and feet to the “blessed” part of the parable 
of the great separation as recorded in the closing part 
of the Gospel according to Matthew, the twenty-fifth 
chapter: They will feed the hungry, give drink to the 
thirsty, entertain the stranger, clothe the unclothed, 
look after those who are ill, and visit those in prison. 

But some way or other to-day we are feeling that 
the social program of Christ will prompt us to do more 
than offer a potion to deaden the pain for a moment; 
we must furnish a remedy for the disease. We will 
not stop being kind and visiting the strangers and the 
sick, and providing flowers for the pulpit and shut-in, 
and taking Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets to the 
poor, and rendering every other form of relief work 
and of Christian helpfulness which we are able to 
render; but at the same time we must interest ourselves 
in the cause of sickness and of poverty and of distress 
and of injustice of every sort. 

We will visit the “stranger,” but we cannot in this 
day be content with that. The obligation resting on 
enlightened Americans to give opportunity to foreign 
neighborhoods cannot possibly be expressed too 
strongly. Without leadership from disinterested, high- 
minded Americans, the foreigner tends to become 
stunted, narrow, selfish, grasping, and dull by the sort 


THE YOUTH OF AMERICA 


182 

of treatment he receives in the mines and mills. It is 
perfectly true that the first words he learns are oaths. 
All that the schools, churches, settlements, and chari¬ 
table organizations combined can do, each in their own 
line and working together, is not really enough at the 
present time to meet the need as it appears to those of 
us who have spent any considerable portion of our 
lives in an industrial neighborhood. 

We will provide food and clothing for the poor, but 
we must recognize that the presence of poverty is at 
once a challenge and an appeal to the Church of Christ. 
There is a poverty that promotes industry, ambition 
and enterprise; there may be a poverty as respects 
dollars, and still allows a decent place to live, and 
plenty to eat and wear, and lots of sunshine and fresh 
air. But the kind of poverty that makes a man go 
hungry and wear shabby clothes and rotten shoes, that 
compels him to raise his children in the slums, that 
makes life a blighted thing, that makes thieves and 
sycophants of men, that robs them of dignity and 
tempts them to dishonor, that gives children no better 
chance for vigorous life than sickly plants in some foul 
cellar, that consigns to a life as empty of dignity and 
gladness and hope as pit or tomb—this sort of poverty 
is monstrous and accursed and of the devil. 

In attacking the cause of poverty the builders of the 
kingdom of God will have to interest themselves in 
wages, sickness, unemployment, desertion or non-sup¬ 
port, domestic difficulties, delinquency, and many other 
causes. 


YOUTH AND RELIGION 


183 


To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth 

What a tremendous dream of world-empire Chris¬ 
tianity cherishes at its heart. Its marching orders are: 
“Ye shall be my witnesses unto the uttermost part of 
the earth.” The person who does not believe in Chris¬ 
tian missions is hardly entitled to be called a believer 
in the Christian religion, for its massive imperial word 
is “Go ... to the whole creation.” 

But Christianity is more than a dream. It is a series 
of events. It has translated the luminous, gripping 
message of the gospel into every language and into 
the very terms of the experience of every race and of 
every type of man. It is diffusing a great moral com¬ 
pulsion. It is releasing upon all the world a great 
spiritual momentum. It is saturating the human mind 
with the ideals and principles of Jesus Christ. Its by¬ 
products in government, literature, art, and science are 
beyond computation. 

“Unto the uttermost parts of the earth” Christian 
missions have gone preaching, teaching, and healing. 
The missionaries are pioneers of conquest. The mis¬ 
sionary movement is Christianity in action. 


















































































